Avaya Inc. is expanding its networking portfolio with a new family of stackable switches designed to power emerging categories of connected devices, literally. The series implements beefed-up Power over Ethernet (PoE) wiring to conduct twice the electricity as more conventional alternatives.

At 60 watts, the ERS 5900 can meet the heightened energy demands of smart lights and other stationary appliances needing to transmit data over the network that require more power than traditional 30-watt switches can provide. Avaya says that the series offers a much simpler alternative to the traditional approach of using separate high-voltage cabling, which is not complicated to install but costs more.

The only major vendor that has been offering such connectivity until now is data center networking kingpin Cisco Systems Inc., which introduced an optional 60-watt PoE module to complement its flagship Catalyst backbone switches all the way back in 2011. Four years later, Avaya is not stopping at merely matching its long-time rival.

The company hopes to extend the usefulness of the ERS 5700 beyond powering stationary appliances to supporting wireless devices with built-in support for the PoE+ standard needed to power new routers based on the latest 802.11 ac specification. The switch can also be extended to accommodate emerging second-generation – or so-called Wave 2 – 802.11 ac routers, a major selling point for organizations that eventually plan on upgrading.

Rounding out the value proposition is support for the industry-standard Media Access Control Security (MACsec) technology, which can mitigate most threats to Ethernet links, including denial-of-service attacks and traffic interception attempts. Administrators can configure more granular security controls for their ERS 5700 switches through Avaya’s SDN Fx software-defined networking platform, which comes integrated with the new series out of the box.