In some of our previously released switch series, customers encountered issues with PoE delivery of the switch to the clients. In most cases, the reason for this was the PoE Mode setting - it was set to Classification while Consumption mode was needed.
What is the difference?
Classification mode will reserve per port a fixed PoE Budget, while Consumption mode will only allow the client to drag as much PoE as is needed for it to perform.
Let's visualize this in a small example: let's assume that you have a 24-Port switch with 180 Watts, and 20 APs, which need every 7 Watts of Energy.
If you set the switch to Classification mode, the Switch will reserve a fixed PoE budget for PoE-consuming ports. Let's assume, that the Classes set reserve 30 watts per port, despite of whether they are needed or not. This will give you (180 watts / 30 watts =) 6 Ports which you can feed PoE towards. This will leave 14 APs left without energy and thus powerless and not functioning.
Consumption mode on the other hand will only let the client only use up as much energy as needed, so only 7 watts each port. Since we have 20 APs each 7 watts, we have a maximum consumption of 140 watts, leaving 40 watts from the rest budget.
How to change PoE modes on Nebula switches:
- Login to your Nebula account
- Navigate to
Site-wide -> Devices -> Switches
- Click on the switch which you want to change the PoE-Mode on
- On the device overview, search for the PoE-Mode and press the "Edit"-Icon
- Change the PoE-Mode to your needs.
- Click on the "Saving"-Button to save your settings.