Network World has posted an interesting Webcast on Power over Ethernet, and it's a good overview of where the technology and standard are today, with a look ahead at PoE Plus.

The Webcast is presented and sponsored by the Ethernet Alliance, a vendor-backed group dedicated to ensuring the continued spread of Ethernet into all the remote corners of networking.

I play a small role in the Webcast. In it, I give a brief overview of why PoE is important and why you should care, and then the two presenters take over to give their presentation on the state of the market and the state of the two standards efforts, PoE and PoE Plus. The presenters are Val Oliva, director of product management for the Enterprise Business Unit of Foundry Networks, and Daniel Feldman, senior product line manager for the Analog and Mixed Signal Group at Microsemi.

If you are interested in VoIP, or if you are interested in building enterprise wireless LANs, then you're interested in PoE. As I mention in my introduction to the Webcast, PoE is behind both movements. It allows data signals to travel the same wires as the electrical power to a device, which makes it far easier (and cheaper) to deploy IP phones or access points for wireless networks.

PoE Plus is the next step, allowing more power to be run to remote devices. Now you can think about deploying devices that are much more complex, such as surveillance cameras that can pan, tilt and zoom.

Go ahead and check out the Webcast, which is free with registration. 

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.