_in on a receiving side i e from the switch or from the end device on the transmitting side of tx rx coupler 500 power is injected by the pse onto the tx _out and tx u2212 _out ports through two divider trees created by elements e 1 e 2 in one embodiment elements e 1 e 2 are inductor elements in another embodiment elements e 1 e 2 are low loss resistive elements as would be appreciated other variations of elements e 1 e 2 can be used to deal with various transients in one embodiment tx rx coupler 500 can be designed to present a low effective impedance at a frequency range of operation this particular tx rx coupler design would enable the support of legacy ethernet switches and end devices in general the midspan equipment design on the transmit side is critical for ensuring proper compatibility with legacy equipment fig6 illustrates another midspan embodiment that is applied to data transmission applications such as 1000base t in this embodiment four wire pairs are used for data transmission accordingly four data transformers can be replaced by four tx rx couplers 621 624 while the power connections are not shown pse 625 can be designed to inject power into one or both e g 802 3at of the two wire pair groupings specifically power can be injected through tx rx couplers 621 622 and or through tx rx couplers 623 624 as would be appreciated the principles of the present invention would apply regardless of whether power was applied to the signal wire pairs as such the midspan.