Mr. Sumpter had called in to our Customer Care line last Friday (8/2) with his concern. I was brought in to the discussion soon after. We shared what we knew about the POE card that was in the system he was trying to use, which he has already posted.
Note that the POE card is a PCI card and not a PCIe card…. hence limiting the choices.
I agree with all the posters that mentioned which POE Mode a device operates with (10/100Mb only) should be available. I have asked the marketing department to update all specs related to this system to mention Mode B.
Other interesting documentation I discovered doing research on this issue are:
I reached out to our partner Axis and they directed me to this FAQ: Do Axis cameras support PoE mode A and/or B?
A PoE camera can be classified as PoE Powered Device (PD) and a PoE midspan/switch can be classified as Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE). The PSE decides whether power mode A or B shall be used.
The current PoE standard is IEEE 802.3at which is based on IEEE 802.3af. Most of AXIS PoE PD's supports both Mode A (data pairs) and Mode B (spare pairs). This is required by both the IEEE803.2af and IEEE 802.3at standards. The only exceptions are PD devices with a M12-connector instead of a RJ45-connector.
From the PoE Spec itself:
IEEE Std 802.3at-2009 AMENDMENT TO IEEE Std 802.3-2008: CSMA/CD
28 Copyright © 2009 IEEE. All rights reserved.
33.2.3 PI pin assignments
A PSE device may provide power via one of two valid four-wire connections. In each four-wire connection,
the two conductors associated with a pair each carry the same nominal current in both magnitude and
polarity. Figure 33–8, in conjunction with Table 33–2, illustrates the valid alternatives.
….
A PSE shall implement Alternative A, Alternative B, or both. While a PSE may be capable of both
Alternative A and Alternative B, PSEs shall not operate both Alternative A and Alternative B on the same
link segment simultaneously.
33.3.1 PD PI
The PD shall be capable of accepting power on either of two sets of PI conductors. The two conductor sets
are named Mode A and Mode B. In each four-wire connection, the two wires associated with a pair are at the
same nominal average voltage. Figure 33–8 in conjunction with Table 33–13 illustrates the two power
modes.
The PD shall be implemented to be insensitive to the polarity of the power supply and shall be able to
operate per the PD Mode A column and the PD Mode B column in Table 33–13.
NOTE—PDs that implement only Mode A or Mode B are specifically not allowed by this standard. PDs that
simultaneously require power from both Mode A and Mode B are specifically not allowed by this standard.
Alternative
The only viable alternative I can suggest would be an active splitter at the camera end such as
The LevelOne POS-1002 PoE Splitter.