Soon you could be using one fewer cable to keep your computer running.
UK firm DSP Design has made a PC that gets electric power via a network cable rather than through a wall socket. Before now power via a network system has only been used for devices such as wireless access points, CCTV cameras and (Voip) internet telephone handsets. DSP said it expected their new PC to find uses where it was hard to lay any kind of cable other than computer network cables.
Socket set
The net-powered PC has come out of a project to create specifications for powering almost any kind of computer hardware through Ethernet cables. Ethernet is the name given to the most widely used way of connecting computers together into local networks. Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) works because when data is sent down network cables it is represented by voltages. Some PoE equipment uses spare wires in cables that link computers back to network hubs and pump power down these.
News source: BBC News
