Thank you and everyone for replying and the ideas that you’ve given to me. Now, the argument that I’m getting from someone is it really worth the effort to get everyone to 1gigabit speed on their desktop computers? About a quarter of the computers at that location are running 100mbit NICs and I had planned on dropping gigabit NICs into the remaining computers with this whole idea. How can I state my case to the higher up that “yes, it is worth the expense and effort to get everyone to 1 gigabit speed on their comptuers” I ask this, because the VOIP phones will provide only 100mbit to the desktop computers.
Unless you are in a medical, space, or physics field, it's unlikely that you need anything more than 100 MBit.
And why isn't your IT department handling this?
/johnny
I’m inclined to agree that most people don’t need gigabit at their desktop, unless you’re moving multi-GB files around every day. The 100mb would be easy since your phones already have an internal 100mb switch.
Also, note that only two of the responses actually took into account the POE requirement you mentioned!
But if you really have to have Gb, then the Cisco POE switch mentioned above would do the trick. Then again, if you’re going to spend $150/computer to do this, you could probably have a second cable pulled, and the the phone and computer would each have their own connection.
“yes, it is worth the expense and effort to get everyone to 1 gigabit speed on their comptuers”
This is most likely not an accurate statement, i.e. there is almost certainly no requirement for 1 Gbps on their computers. People do not take kindly to being over-sold solutions which provide no improvement in service -this is your risk here.
Seriously, any company conducting reputable computing operations at 1 Gbps will not have a network technician who does not know what a switch is. I will therefore assume your company does not have OC3 connectivity or clients requiring throughput above 100 Mbps. Ergo don’t waste time and money on end user equipment for which there is no provider equipment or end user requirement.
As others have stated an inexpensive switch and VoIP power supplies will work. If you don’t want to buy the VoIP PSs then you’re shelling out a grand or more for a POE switch.