I agree that APs shouldn't be cut off. However, I do have a way to do it that might work for you:
The PowerDsine Mid-Span power inserters (latest firmware) allow you to schedule power off by hour and day of the week. This doesn't help with classes that start on the half hour or end 10 minutes before the hour, etc. But, it is simple and effective if you can live with the fixed schedule. The unit presents a matrix of days of the week and hours of each day that you check or uncheck to allow or disallow power to the devices attach. A drawback is that every port on the PoE inserter must either obey the schedule or ignore it -- you can't have one schedule for port 1 and another for ports 2-4, etc. Depending on your environment, you could possibly put all the APs needing a single schedule on one PoE unit and others in the building on other units. Units come in 6, 12, & 24-port versions. We have found these to be cheaper and easier to manage that the PoE blades available for our switches, though I still want a global manager for them. (Management is via Web interface.) This is not a suggested solution, just a description of one approach to AP scheduling. -jcw ------------------------------------- John Watters UA: OIT 205-348-3992 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
