Abstract: Power sourcing equipment (“PSE”) can temporarily suspend or indefinitely disable powered devices (“PDs”) exhibiting faults for more efficient resource utilization and preservation of the PSE hardware. The PSE maintains a first counter for each connected PD that indicates a count of fault events detected for the PD. Upon detecting a count of fault events for a PD within a designated time period that exceeds a first threshold, the PSE suspends the PD and increments a second counter maintained for the PD that indicates how many times the PD has been suspended. The PSE suspends processing of/responding to communications received from the suspended PD for the duration of the suspension. Subsequent fault detection and suspension for the PD can continue until the suspension count of the PD exceeds a second threshold, which triggers disabling of the faulty PD by discontinuing processing of/responding to communications received from the PD indefinitely.