VoIP rollouts generate heat, power concerns

Things are about to heat up at Charter Steel. We're not talking smelters here, but network wiring closets.

Over the next few months, the company plans to roll out hundreds of IP phones to corporate desktops, with Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches to run electricity to the devices. The company recently upgraded its Avaya Definity phone switch to a network of Avaya S8700 IP PBXs , which are tied together over IP. This is where things could get hot, says Peter Schwei, telecom manager for the Saukville, Wis., steel company.

As the company consolidated its data center and voice technology, it installed new facilities that also provide the cooling needs for the new gear. But wiring closet environmental needs will have to be dealt with as the company switches from TDM-based handsets to IP phones.

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Things are about to heat up at Charter Steel. We're not talking smelters here, but network wiring closets.

Over the next few months, the company plans to roll out hundreds of IP phones to corporate desktops, with Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches to run electricity to the devices. The company recently upgraded its Avaya Definity phone switch to a network of Avaya S8700 IP PBXs , which are tied together over IP. This is where things could get hot, says Peter Schwei, telecom manager for the Saukville, Wis., steel company.

As the company consolidated its data center and voice technology, it installed new facilities that also provide the cooling needs for the new gear. But wiring closet environmental needs will have to be dealt with as the company switches from TDM-based handsets to IP phones.

Schwei says rolling out IP to desktops could pose the same problems facing local broadband providers. "It's the issues in the last mile, so to speak, that might get us," he says. The need to increase electrical feeds to wiring closets to support PoE, and the additional cooling systems required to keep gear from overheating, are now becoming more obvious as Charter Steel's VoIP deployment moves forward.

"Those are issues we will have to deal with at our distribution layer," Schwei says. "It's like cleaning out your sock drawer. You just have to do it."

In the heat of the night

Businesses installing widespread PoE gear for IP telephony or Wi-Fi access point deployments are finding the extra electricity that PoE gear can draw, and the additional heat the devices generate as a result, are factors that need to be taken into account.

It's a simple concept, experts say: Where there are electronics, there is electricity, which produces heat. Turn up the juice, and things get hotter.

With the deployment of PoE, the heat loads of telecom equipment migrates from a centralized telephone closet or electrical closet out to the distribution layer of the LAN.

"If you have thousands of phones and have multiple PoE switches, that can draw three to four times the power draw, and subsequent heat output," says Dave Story, enterprise power specialist for CDW, which sells IT products and provides consulting services.

In the past, Story says, most businesses installed critical air-conditioning systems for phone and server rooms, and that was about it. Now companies moving to VoIP and PoE technologies must consider cooling requirements for every space in a building where a LAN switch might reside - wiring closets and other nooks and crannies.

If stacks of PoE switches are replacing older LAN gear, not only is cooling a concern but increasing power feeds to wiring closets must also be factored in.

Often when you deploy core switches that provide PoE, new power supplies in the switch require new wiring.

"A lot of these boxes are not using a three-prong outlet," he says. This is more along the lines of electric dryer outlets.