Choosing a Firewall with PoE Integration

If you’ve ever hung holiday lights on your house, you know what a chore it can be to run the wiring. Unless you have a lot of power outlets scattered around your property, you likely have one long string of lights attached to a power source.

The entire process is time-consuming and often a little frustrating. Although, the end result can be spectacular and festive.

In some ways, setting up network devices for an office, campus or retail location provides a similar experience. Printers, access points, security cameras, IP phones, point of sale (POS) terminals and other devices need power and a connection to a switch or firewall/router.

Typically, this means placing each device near an outlet and running cables through walls and plenum spaces. I did this for my home network with one of my sons. We ran power cords and Ethernet cables through book cases and under the floor. But was there a better way?

What is PoE?

Hanging the holiday lights was a great learning experience for him and we got to use some power tools. However, the ideal solution would have involved fewer cables and cords — something a firewall with power over Ethernet (PoE) can provide.

If you have a mid-size or larger network, there’s a good chance you have a PoE switch to provide power to your PoE-enabled devices. It’s a good solution, although there is a cost to purchase the switch.

If you have a smaller network, with only a few devices that need power and you don’t want to spend the money to buy a PoE switch, a firewall with built-in power over Ethernet is your answer. Fortunately, SonicWall can help.

Using Firewalls with PoE Integration

Designed for small organizations and distributed enterprises with remote and branch offices, the SonicWall TZ600P and TZ300P integrate support for PoE and PoE+ devices. These Unified Threat Management (UTM) firewalls help reduce both the cost and complexity associated with PoE injectors and switches by providing power directly to connected PoE-enabled devices, such as wireless access points, POS terminals, printers, cameras and other IP devices.

Instead of two cables, there’s one. And you don’t need to place the device near an outlet, which helps when you’re designing your office or store layout. Plus, you don’t need to spend your budget on a PoE switch. Both firewalls support the IEEE 802.3af (PoE) and more powerful 802.3at (PoE+) standards, which newer devices require.

_{SonicWall TZ600P and TZ300P deliver integrated PoE to help remove wire clutter and deployment complexity.}

PoE/PoE+ support is just one of the many features included with TZ series firewalls. In addition, the TZ600P and TZ300P consolidate a host of essential security and networking features. For example, small organizations, including retail shops, can utilize high-speed 802.11ac wireless for internal and customer/guest connectivity while segmenting traffic for each group using virtual LANs.

Larger distributed enterprises can take advantage of these same capabilities while connecting locations using site-to-site VPN. There’s also Secure SD-WAN, SonicWall’s implementation of software-defined networking in a wide area network. Secure SD-WAN helps distributed organizations reduce the cost and complexity of building a secure private network using expensive MPLS technology.

Bringing up new sites is simplified using Zero-Touch Deployment, which removes the need for onsite personnel to provision the firewall. If you do have multiple sites to manage, the SonicWall Capture Security Center enables single-pane-of-glass management for SonicWall devices via the cloud.

Of course, the big benefit is security. This year alone, we’ve seen more high-profile network breaches across multiple industries. The TZ600P and TZ300P help stop breaches and other cyberattacks, including ransomware, cryptojacking and more.

SonicWall firewalls were validated for their high security effectiveness and overall value by NSS Labs again in 2018, so you can feel confident your data and your customers’ information are secure from cybercriminals. Learn more about how TZ series firewalls can fit into your small or distributed enterprise network.

Scott Grebe

Senior Product Marketing Manager | SonicWall

Scott Grebe has over 20 years of product marketing and product management experience working for high tech companies including SonicWall, Apple Computer and SGI. In his current role, Mr. Grebe is a senior product marketing manager for security products at SonicWall. Mr. Grebe holds an M.S. in Communications (television/radio/film) from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.