The PES42P power sourcing Edge Switch combines standard 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) with a small heavy-duty 6 port Ethernet switch at a very attractive price. Using an external 48Vdc power source, four of the PES42P's RJ45 ports can provide power as well as 10/100Mbps data transmission over the inter-connecting Ethernet cables as per the 802.3af standard.The 2 ports that do not have PoE capability can be used as the backbone ports for a fibre optic or copper based redundant ring network. This can provide a fault tolerant network solution as well as delivering power to end devices - a new and very powerful concept.