Dell PowerSwitch E3248PXE-ON PoE+ Switch

The Dell PowerSwitch E3248PXE-ON is a 1RU edge switch with 48 multigigabit RJ45 ports that auto-negotiate 10Mb through 10GbE and deliver IEEE 802.3bt PoE at up to 90W per port, four 25GbE SFP28 uplinks and two integrated 100GbE QSFP28 uplinks, forwarding at 2167 Mpps across a 1560 Gbps non-blocking fabric under Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies.

It is the highest-powered switch in Dell's E3200 edge line, and it exists because the devices hanging off a modern wiring closet stopped being 15W devices.

Why 90W per port changed what an edge switch has to be

For twenty years the access layer was a solved problem: 48 ports of gigabit copper, a couple of fibre uplinks, 15W or 30W of PoE, done. Three things broke that at once.

The first is wireless. A tri-radio access point with 6GHz radios draws more than 802.3at's 30W can supply, and when it cannot get full power it does not fail - it quietly disables a radio or drops transmit chains, which shows up as a coverage complaint six weeks later rather than as an alarm. 802.3bt at 90W removes that failure mode entirely, and it is the reason this switch exists in the same building as the access points rather than one floor away.

The second is the uplink. If an access point can actually use its radios, it can exceed a gigabit, and a 1GbE access port becomes the bottleneck instead of the air. That is what the multigigabit ports are for: the same Cat5e or Cat6 cable already in the wall negotiates 2.5G, 5G or 10G with no re-pull, which is the difference between a software upgrade and a construction project.

The third is everything else that now takes power over Ethernet - PTZ and multi-sensor cameras, video conferencing systems, VoIP handsets, LED luminaires, door controllers, digital signage and building sensors. Dell names most of that list explicitly in the E3200 specification. Individually none of it is remarkable; collectively it is why a 1600W supply sits in a 1RU access switch.

PoE budget is a power-supply decision, not a spec-sheet number

Dell does not publish a single system PoE budget for this switch, and that is honest rather than evasive: the answer depends on what you install. One 1600W 80 PLUS Platinum hot-swappable supply ships with the switch. The chassis takes a second in the adjacent bay, which buys both redundancy and headroom. Beyond that, Dell offers external power shelves - the MPS-1S holding a single supply and the MPS-3S holding up to three, in 1050W AC, 1600W AC, 2000W AC or 1300W DC - specifically to extend the PoE budget of the two 48-port PoE models in this series.

The practical way to size it is to add up what you are actually powering. Forty-eight ports at 90W is a number no real deployment hits; a floor of 30W access points, a dozen cameras and some handsets is a very different figure from a stadium full of 90W multi-sensor domes. Tell us the device mix with your quote request and we will tell you what the supply configuration needs to be, because getting this wrong is the most common way a PoE refresh disappoints.

Enterprise SONiC, and what that actually commits you to

The two 48-port PoE models in the E3200 series run Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies. This is worth being precise about, because SONiC is the single biggest decision attached to this switch.

SONiC is an open-source network operating system built for large-scale data-centre fabrics, with a container-based architecture and a configuration model designed to be driven by automation rather than by a human at a console. Dell's enterprise distribution wraps it in supported builds and management features. If your network is already described in code - if switches are provisioned from a pipeline and their state is asserted rather than typed - this is exactly the platform you want at the edge too, because the edge stops being the one hand-managed tier in an otherwise automated estate.

If your network is managed by a small team using a CLI and a spreadsheet, be deliberate about it. SONiC is not the campus CLI that Dell's N-series speaks, and the operational muscle memory does not transfer. That is not an argument against the switch; it is an argument for knowing which switch you are buying, which brings us to its twin.

The E3248PXE-ON and the N3248PXE-ON are the same hardware doing different jobs

Put the two spec sheets side by side and the hardware figures are identical: 48 multigigabit ports with 802.3bt 90W PoE, four 25GbE SFP28, two 100GbE QSFP28, a 1560 Gbps fabric, 2167 Mpps of forwarding, a 17.6 lb 1RU chassis and a 1600W supply. Dell sells that platform twice, and the differences are the ones that decide your architecture.

The N3248PXE-ON is the campus build. It runs Dell's campus OS6, and its two 100GbE ports are stacking ports - 400 Gbps of stack bandwidth, up to twelve switches managed under a single IP address. That is the traditional campus model: a stack per closet, one management target, one configuration.

The E3248PXE-ON is the edge build. It runs Enterprise SONiC, carries 16GB of CPU memory rather than 4GB, and its two 100GbE ports are uplinks. There is no stack. Redundancy comes from MLAG - two switches presenting active/active uplinks with no spanning tree and firmware upgrades that do not take the segment offline - and from VRF-lite, which partitions one physical switch into several virtual routers with isolated control and data planes.

Neither is better. Stacking gives you one thing to manage and one thing to lose; MLAG gives you two independent devices and a failure domain that stops at one of them. If you are extending an existing Dell campus stack, take the N-series. If you are building an edge site that is a small routed fabric in its own right - or if it has to look like the rest of an automated estate - this is the one.

What "edge" means on this switch

Dell positions the E3200 series for large enterprise offices, branches and edge networks, and the design shows where it is expected to be installed: somewhere without an engineer.

USB auto-configuration is the clearest tell. The switch will configure itself from a flash drive, with no TFTP server, no DHCP option plumbing and nobody dispatched to a remote office to read a config off a laptop. Someone at the site plugs in a drive and racks the switch. For an estate of dozens of branches that is the difference between a deployment and a travel budget.

The rest follows the same logic: dual firmware images on-board so a bad upgrade has somewhere to fall back to, hot-swappable supplies and redundant variable-speed fans so a failure is a part swap rather than an outage, and Dell Fresh Air compliance for operation up to 113 F (45 C) so a warm comms cupboard is not automatically a problem.

One thing to be clear about, because it is often assumed: this is a commercial-temperature switch, not an industrially hardened one. Dell rates it 32 to 113 F (0 to 45 C) operating, it is actively cooled by fans, and it carries no industrial or extended-temperature rating. It belongs in a comms room, a wiring closet or a distribution frame - not on a factory floor, in an unconditioned cabinet or anywhere below freezing.

Uplinks: why 25GbE and 100GbE on an access switch

Forty-eight multigigabit ports can, in principle, present far more access bandwidth than a pair of 10GbE uplinks would carry, so Dell sized the uplinks for the ports rather than for tradition. Four 25GbE SFP28 ports handle aggregation to a distribution layer; two rear 100GbE QSFP28 ports let the switch attach directly to a spine at the same speed and on the same optics and cables as everything else in the building.

The practical consequence is that the edge stops needing its own intermediate aggregation tier and its own separate optics inventory. Both port types are line-rate and non-blocking for Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing alike, so there is no oversubscription conversation to have - the fabric is sized for all of it.

On attach: the SFP28 uplinks take 25GBASE-SR optics or passive 25GBASE-CR direct-attach copper, and the 100GbE ports are offered with 100GBASE-CR4 passive DAC. If you need 100G over any distance beyond a DAC run, tell us at quotation - that is a sourcing conversation rather than a menu selection.

Layer 3 at the edge

This is a full Layer 3 switch, not an access switch with static routes bolted on. Under Enterprise SONiC it carries advanced IPv4 and IPv6 routing - BGP, VRF, BFD, PIM-SM/DM/SSM, IGMP/MLD, RIPv1/v2 and OSPFv2/v3 - plus VXLAN for stretching Layer 2 segments across a routed underlay.

That matters at a branch or campus edge for two reasons. Routing at the access layer keeps broadcast domains small and failure domains local, which is the entire argument for a routed access design. And VRF-lite lets one physical switch carry genuinely separated networks - corporate, guest, building systems, and whatever the security team insists on isolating - without another box in the rack and without trusting VLAN discipline alone to keep them apart.

Security features are the ones an access layer actually uses: authentication tiering, which lets 802.1X, MAC Authentication Bypass and Captive Portal be ordered by priority on a single port so one socket can serve a laptop, a printer and a guest; private VLAN extensions and Private VLAN Edge; AAA authorization with TACACS+ accounting and RADIUS; broadcast storm control and flow-based port mirroring.

A note on software: a Dell software entitlement is bound to the unit's service tag and to a Dell account, and does not automatically transfer on the secondary market. A refurbished unit may arrive with a working image installed and without an active entitlement or support contract. We do not promise a transferred Dell licence, a software subscription or a support contract with a refurbished switch. Tell us what you intend to run and we will confirm the state of a specific unit before it ships.

Airflow and power

The E3200 series is built one way: I/O panel to power supply. Every power supply Dell lists for it is an I/O-to-PSU part, and the only spare fan module is the I/O-to-PSU module. There is no reverse-airflow build to choose or to get wrong, which is a genuine simplification compared with the S-series data-centre switches, where picking the wrong direction is a real and recurring mistake.

Power draw deserves a mention because the figures look alarming out of context. Dell's 4869W maximum power consumption and 18487 BTU/hr thermal output are worst-case numbers with every port delivering PoE at full load - they are the PoE load, not the switch. The switch itself is a 1RU box; the wattage is what it is handing to your access points and cameras. Size the circuit for the PoE budget you actually intend to deliver, not for the spec-sheet ceiling.

Common questions

Can I stack two E3248PXE-ON switches?

No. The two 100GbE QSFP28 ports on this model are uplinks. For redundancy, pair two switches with MLAG - that gives active/active uplinks with no spanning tree and lets you upgrade firmware on one without dropping the segment. If you specifically want a stack, the N3248PXE-ON is the same hardware built for it.

Will 90W PoE work over the cable I already have?

802.3bt at 90W uses all four pairs, so the cable has to be four-pair and terminated on all eight conductors - which Cat5e and above are, when they were installed properly. The more common surprise is heat: bundles of cable carrying high PoE currents run warmer, which is a derating consideration for large tightly-bundled runs rather than a reason not to proceed. Multigigabit negotiation is separate and works over existing Cat5e at 2.5G and usually 5G, with 10G depending on length and cable quality.

Do I need the MPS power shelf?

Only if your PoE budget exceeds what the internal supplies can deliver. Most deployments do not need it. It is worth pricing when you are powering a dense floor of 90W devices, and it is worth deciding at quotation because it changes the rack layout.

How is this different from the E3248P-ON?

The E3248P-ON is the same 48-port shape at the previous PoE and port generation: gigabit copper rather than multigigabit, 802.3at 30W rather than 802.3bt 90W, 10GbE SFP+ uplinks rather than 25GbE, a 1050W supply rather than 1600W, and 576 Gbps of fabric rather than 1560 Gbps. If your access devices are 30W and gigabit is enough, it is the right switch and the cheaper one to power. If you are buying for the next refresh cycle rather than the current one, buy the multigig.

Is it TAA compliant?

Dell states TAA compliance under the Trade Agreements Act for the E3200 series. Confirm the requirement with your quote request so it can be verified against the specific unit.

Where it sits in the E3200 series

Availability, condition and how to buy

This model is supplied to order. Power-supply count, PoE budget, external power shelf and uplink attach are all confirmed at quotation, so use the quote request on this page and tell us what the site needs - the device mix you are powering matters more than the port count.

Every unit is refurbished, professionally reconditioned, powered up, inspected and functionally tested before it ships, and it ships with warranty coverage. If you need a specific Enterprise SONiC state, or a matched pair for an MLAG domain, say so with your request.

Specifications