Sifos Technologies Announces the PoE Power Sourcing Equipment Conformance Test Suite for 4-Pair, IEEE 802.3bt


PSE Conformance Test Suite for 4-Pair IEEE 802.3bt, Report & GUI

The 24 tests that make up the 4-Pair Conformance Test Suite cover over 92% of the PSE PICs in the IEEE 802.3bt specification while also covering many requirements overlooked by the published PSE PICs. The 4-Pair PSE Conformance Test Suite is widely used throughout the internetworking community.

Sifos Technologies announces the fully automated conformance test suite for 4-Pair 802.3bt PSE’s. With this test suite the promise of highly interoperable 802.3bt PSE’s becomes a reality. As an automated test suite the PoE PSE Conformance Test Suite for 4-Pair 802.3bt provides all of the features of the 2-Pair 802.3at & 802.3bt test suites while adding many new features including:

  • Robust 802.3bt 4-Pair PSE Conformance Testing
  • Fully Automated Port Sequencing and Statistics covering up to 24 PSE Ports with one PSA-3000
  • Greater than 92% 802.3bt PICS Coverage from 24 Tests Producing up to 344 Test Parameters per Port
  • Fully Emulates All Type-1, 2, 3, and 4 PD’s Including Single and Dual Signature Classes and PoE LLDP-Capable PD’s
  • Test Type-3 and Type-4 PSE’s that Allocate Power Using Multi-Event, LLDP, or Both Multi-Event and LLDP
  • Automatically Adapts to All Prevalent PSE Signaling and Power Management Behaviors
  • Configurable Waveform Trace Diagnostic Generation and Retention
  • Colorful and Informative Spreadsheet Reporting with Compliance (Pass/Fail) Notations and Parameter Statistics
  • Run & Sequence from PSA Interactive GUI or PowerShell PSA Command Line

With the introduction of the IEEE 802.3bt standard, Power-over-Ethernet expanded from a 30W powering system to a 90W powering system. In order to meet this challenge, extensive new features were added placing many new demands on both PSE’s and Powered Devices (PD’s). The added complexity on the PSE side is best expressed comparing the 31 page 802.3bt PSE state machine to the 4 page 802.3at PSE state machine.

The 802.3bt standard also specifies a new form of PoE Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) that expands the TLV fields carrying PSE and PD information from 12 to 29 while maintaining PD power allocations with a granularity of 0.1 watt.

Given the complexity of a fully compliant 4-Pair 802.3bt PSE, the range of test cases that must be run is so enormous as to prohibit manual testing as a practical solution. The 4-Pair PSE Conformance Test Suite produces over 300 test parameters for each PSE port tested with a maximum possible count of 344 test parameters. The test suite automatically adapts to a wide range of possible PSE implementations and produces a number of implementation-specific test parameters.

The 4-Pair PSE Conformance Test Suite automatically sequences to a pop-up spreadsheet report with full color notations of parameter pass/fail status per port and cross-port statistics for each parameter. The report also includes Sifos proprietary scoring for PSE Safety and PSE Interoperability.

About: Sifos Technologies is the worldwide market leader in PoE (PSE and PDs) testing and also provides innovative Ethernet PHY (physical layer) automated test & measurement solutions for network equipment manufacturers, silicon providers, independent test labs, telecommunication service providers, system integrators, field service organizations, and IT departments.

The company is located just outside Boston, Massachusetts (USA). Follow Sifos Technologies on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

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