Need POE Primer

jbschwartz55

I'm looking to buy a couple of new cameras as an upgrade to my early Panasonic consumer models. Each of these cams came with their own AC adapter. The question is how to approach Power Over Ethernet. POE itself appears to be a good thing, but the question is how to best implement it in a home environment where I might be adding more POE cameras in the future...or I might not.

For the sake of example, I am looking at adding two Dahua Technology IPC-HFW4100S.

Here are the POE options I see:

1) Single injector + splitter + power supply. At $19.99, this is low cost but not after 2 cameras.
http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PoE150S-Gigabit-Injector-compliant/dp/B001PS9E5I/ref=pd_bxgy_pc_img_y

2) Separate multiple port injector box/power supply + regular switch. At $39.95, this appears to be better then #1.
http://www.amazon.com/WS-POE-8-48v60w-passive-Ethernet-Injector-cameras/dp/B0086SQDMM/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1421257308&sr=1-1

3) POE switch with internal power (?). $120. Is this better than #2?
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ProSAFE-8-Port-Gigabit-GS108PE-300NAS/dp/B00M1C03U2/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1421257354&sr=1-4&keywords=poe+switch+netgear

In the case of #3, there seems to be some discrepancy whether this Netgear POE switches actually provide the voltage internally, versus requiring a separate box to provide the power. Here is that user comment:
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ProSAFE-8-Port-Gigabit-GS108PE-300NAS/product-reviews/B00M1C03U2/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0

If so, what additional HW is required to provide the POS power?

I also see reports of POE switches running hot and perhaps less reliably?

So...what is the common wisdom on how to make this decision.

Thanks

Ben

The best option is always going to be to use a high-quality switch with built-in PoE at the heart of your network. Injectors are fine, but for more than a few cameras they become unwieldy and expensive, and they are additional components that can go wrong in the future. If you go down the injector route, the multi-port injector would be a better option than single injectors for more than one or two cameras.

Netgear makes good switches, and the GS108PE-300NAS that you link to is a nice little PoE model. It provides PoE over only 4 of its ports (the ones with the yellow strip below them), so if you think you might need more than this in the future, then get a bigger one.

The discussion you linked to about lack of PoE refers to a different switch in the same product line (GS105PE-10000S) that has only 5 ports, one of which must be an incoming PoE connection from another switch. Avoid this model.