Poe

The managed-switch buying guide on this site mentions PoE as one line item to decide up front, since PoE switches cost more and aren’t something you bolt on later. That’s true, but it skips past the part that actually trips people up once PoE gear is already in the rack: the standards are confusing, “PoE switch” doesn’t mean “powers anything you plug into it,” and the failure mode when you get the budget wrong isn’t a clean error message, it’s a device that reboots randomly or just never comes up at a weird port. ...