Who am I kidding? It's easier to talk about technology than life.
If any one of you losers ever need to choose between two particularly arcane network module cards for a Cisco ISR for a minimal CCME deployment in a branch or SMB office somewhere, this Pulitzer material may help you:
1. The NM-16ESW-PWR card is not compliant with the IEEE 802.3af Power over Ethernet standard. It only supports Cisco proprietary and pre-standard PoE inline power. The newer NME-16ES-1G-P card however, supports both. This is significant for the following reasons:
a. Cisco has announced newer versions of IP phones that are IEEE 802.3af standard compliant. Due to the lack of compliance and compatibility with open standards, the older pre-standard phones will be phased out eventually.
b. As the IEEE 802.3af is an open standard, it will allow any compliant device (IP phone or otherwise) from any vendor to be used with this module. The Cisco inline power standard is only compatible with Cisco-proprietary legacy devices.
2. The NME-16ES-1G-P module has a 10/100/1000 port that allows the module to be uplinked directly to a core switch without any degradation of performance.
3. The NME-16ES-1G-P is a more powerful switching module. As against the NM-16ESW-PWR module, the NME-16ES-1G-P module has the following additional features:
a. The NME-16ES-1G-P module has its own processor, memory and flash memory that allows it to offload any workload from the Router's resources. The cards also have their own independent Cisco IOS software image for greater flexibility.
b. It provides layer 2 and layer 3 switching in the module itself.
c. It has more switching features -
i. Cisco smartports support
ii. VTP pruning
iii. Support for 1024 VLANs
iv. More support for Multicast and Unicast
v. Support for the VLAN Access Control List (VACL) security feature
4. The NME-16ES-1G-P module is more future-proof than the NM-16ESW-PWR module. It is a much newer card, with support for new IEEE standards such as 802.3ae (10 Gigabit Ethernet). Other supported standards include IEEE 802.1s, 802.1w, 802.1x, and 802.3d.
5. From the datasheet for NM-16ESW-PWR module, the following is quoted:
From the "Cisco Ethernetswitch Module Summary" on page two:
"CISCO ETHERSWITCH MODULE SUMMARY
• NM-16ESW-One 16-port 10/100 EtherSwitch Network Module
• NM-16ESW-PWR**-One 16-port 10/100 EtherSwitch NM with Cisco pre-standard PoE support
• NM-16ESW-1GIG-One 16-port 10/100 EtherSwitch NM with 1 GE (1000BaseT) port
• NM-16ESW-PWR-1GIG**-One 16-port 10/100 EtherSwitch NM with Cisco pre-standard PoE and GE
** This 16-port version should be ordered only if you require Cisco pre-standard Power over Ethernet (POE). To take advantage of this capability be sure to have or order an external power unit to support Power over Ethernet (POE) for the Cisco 2600 and 3600 or be sure to order the internal power supply upgrade when using the Etherswitch Network module in combination with the Cisco 2800, 3700,and 3800 Series."
And on the last line in paragraph 1 of page 5:
"…the phone discovery allows the EtherSwitch NM-16ESW-PWR to automatically detect the presence of an IP phone and supplies Cisco pre-standard power over Ethernet*.
* For 802.3af power over Ethernet support one of the newer EtherSwitch Service Modules (NME-16ES-1G-P, NME-23ES-1G-P, or NME-XD-48ES-2S-P) or one of the EtherSwitch HWICs (HWIC-4ESW-POE or HWIC-D-9ESW-POE) are recommended."
From this, it is clear that even Cisco recommends the use of the NME-16ES-1G-P module unless there is a specific requirement for the pre-standard inline power.
