AP One Mini PoE Class vs. TrendNet TPE-P521ES

Product Discussion Pepwave AP & Surf
1

I have a TrendNet TPE-P521ES PoE+ Passthrough Switch which is powered by PoE+ and splits that power to two downstream PoE ports. The switch has an 18W power budget for the two ports. I wanted to use it to power two PoE devices (an AP One Mini and a VOIP phone). The AP One Mini uses about 4 watts, and the VOIP phone uses about 5W. Should be no problem, right?

Unfortunately the 521ES has a limitation - it splits the 18W power budget based on the Advertised PoE class rather than actual draw.

The AP One mini advertises itself as a “Class 3” device, meaning it can use up to 15.4W. Unfortunately, this leads the 521ES switch to think that it doesn’t have any power left. End result: the swtich will only power 1 device.

Question: Since the AP One Mini (HW2) uses less than 5W, is there any way, in software, to tell it to advertise itself as a PoE class 2 device (max 7W)?

2

If this can’t be set in software you could use this as an alternative.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07W87KSFQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

3

Thanks Jonathan, but I’m pretty sure most of those devices advertise themselves as Class 0 or Class 3. The product info says 12V @ 2A = 24W which is much higher than class 1 (4W) or Class 2 (7W).

If I could find one that was actually Class 2 that might work.

4

To follow up on this post, I eventually found a solution. By forcing both of the PoE ports on the switch to Class 2 (7W) max, I was eventually able to get both the Peplink AP One Mini and my VOIP phone working simultaneously.

5

One year update: it turns out my solution does not quite work.
Although the TPE-521ES will boot up both devices in the Class 2 profile (7 Watts each), it turns out the AP One Mini will occasionally use a tad bit more than 7W in operation. For example, when doing a big download over WiFi (multi gigabytes) the AP One Mini would try to use more than 7 watts, and the PoE switch would cut the power, causing the AP to reboot.

Although the TPE-P521ES has settings to allow custom per-device milliWatt limits, I was never able to find settings that would allow both devices to boot up and remain running under load.

The switch allows you to have Two class 2 devices (7W each = 14W total power budget) but if you try to do a custom split (8W + 6W = 14W, or 9W + 5W = 14W) it never allows more than one device at a time to be powered on. Seems like a bug in the TrendNet.