Difference between SW 10/100 and PC ports.

[premavardhan]

Hi Friends,

            I am using Cisco IP Phone 7960. Can any one tell me what is the difference beween SW10/100 port and PC port, i.e, the Ethernet port that are located at the backend of the IP Phone.

Regards,

PVR.

[Gordon Ross]

The phone plugs into your data network via the SW10/100 port, and you can then daisy chain a PC off the phone via the PC port. If your network supports it, your phone will draw it's power via the SW10/100 port too.

I've heard rumours that some people do crazy (read: Unsupported) things whereby they feed the network into the phone via the PC port. (Not tried it myself)

GTG

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

I ran across one customer that had a whole second network for failover (think A/B side). All of the phones used local power bricks since the PC Port can't supply PoE. They were so worried about an access layer switch failure downing the phones in their call center they had two NICs in their PCs and both ports on the phone connected upstream.