DHCP or static IPs for 50+ IP cameras

eibyer

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We have a new ongoing installation of about cameras that's probably going to end up in the 110 or so cams since the max on the NVR is 128. I am not doing the install but I work on the IT side, I set up a different network for the cams so our internal network doesn't get bogged down by cam traffic.

Anyways, there were about 30 or so devices that went online initially, they connected fine and after a few more came online, some of the existing ones dropped off with the Network Abnormal message under configuration. I tracked this down to IP conflict, I believe all the cameras are configured with DHCP off but still got assigned an IP address. I had to use the SADP tool to do some detective work and get the other cameras back online.

Long story short, should I set all the non-dhcp ones to dhcp to avoid this issue when the other devices get added again.
 
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You could use DHCP + Hardware reservation, I don't know for sure, but suspect Blue Iris would get confused if cameras fell off the network and came back online only to get a different DHCP address, especially if they have different login information. I personally would set them manually (and do) but then again I don't have 110 of them.
 

TonyR

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I would go static and assign IP's outside the router's DHCP pool.
IOW, if router's LAN is 192.168.1.1 and pool is 192.168.2 to .99, use .100 to .250; that would satisfy 150 cams.

EDIT: since this is an existing LAN, insure no device is already on the IP range that's outside the DHCP pool; if so RE-ASSIGN that device and stick with the above schema, document your settings for your records.

A router cannot assign IP's to DHCP devices outside its own DHCP pool. I've done it like this (on a smaller scale, certainly) for years and have never had an issue.
 
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eibyer

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You could use DHCP + Hardware reservation, I don't know for sure, but suspect Blue Iris would get confused if cameras fell off the network and came back online only to get a different DHCP address, especially if they have different login information. I personally would set them manually (and do) but then again I don't have 110 of them.
I actually tried to use the ARP+MAC binding of the router but hit a snag when I found out (the long way) that the max reservation is 60. There are two separate areas in the TP-Link settings, one is ARP+MAC Binding and then one is DHCP Reservation. ARP+MAC was the one with 60 entries limit. I will have to check the TP-Link docs to see if the limit is the same on the reservation.
 

TonyR

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I actually tried to use the ARP+MAC binding of the router but hit a snag when I found out (the long way) that the max reservation is 60. There are two separate areas in the TP-Link settings, one is ARP+MAC Binding and then one is DHCP Reservation. ARP+MAC was the one with 60 entries limit. I will have to check the TP-Link docs to see if the limit is the same on the reservation.
If you use the method I described in post #3, it won't matter if the router has reservation or binding limits.
 

mikeynags

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DHCP sure beats touching 100+ cams each manually
 

TonyR

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DHCP sure beats touching 100+ cams each manually
It does but what does a VMS do when power is cycled off/on, there's no battery backup on the power to some or all the cameras and that VMS is expecting to find specific cameras at specific IP addresses?
Network printers address this with a unique embedded print server name but not aware of such a function in most IP cameras...at least none that I have configured. Apple's Bonjour may address this but I have never set up IP cams in an iOS environment.
 

mikeynags

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@TonyR - I hear you. It all depends on how close the camera vendor adheres to the standard for DHCP. Most likely, if a cam is powered off and back on again, it will issue a DHCP discover broadcast looking for a DHCP server. My point about was more about having the flexibility to not manually touch 100+ cams to set their IPs, assuming of course that they support DHCP out of the box.
 

eibyer

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I meant to ask this last week but got sidetracked. It seems the cameras are defaulted to dhcp off. Just trying to understand the process, so when adding a new camera to the system, the NVR sees the new device and it can see it doesn't have an IP address yet. Let's say I do a 'quick add' to this new device. Does the NVR request the IP from the DHCP server then passes that on to the new camera?
 
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