Cisco's PoE Passthrough switch powers itself

Cisco Systems has developed a Power over Ethernet Passthrough switch, which powers itself. In a video Narayanan Krishnamoorthy, a technical marketing engineer with Cisco, explains that the concept of PoE Passthrough is power coming into the switch from uplink ports that are PoE and PoE-Plus-capable. The switch uses that power to power itself, and if excess power is available, the switch allocates that power on the downlink ports.

The switch has no power supply and is cooled by convection, as is pointed out in the video. As a result, the switch is fanless and therefore quiet. Krishnamoorthy says Cisco put its best engineers on the project of developing the PoE Passthrough. A key technological breakthrough was the development of a chip to accept PoE coming through the uplink.

The in-house Cisco video, as we might expect, gushes over the switch's capability.

Take a look.