Word of warning

cage771

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This morning I went into my office to find Cisco IP phone had connection to the network but couldn't connect to the internet. I turned on the TV in my office (Lenovo stick PC with a UI3 BI client running) and my cameras were gone. Went down to the rack and found that my POE switch was dead. Dead dead. Did the typical troubleshooting.....it was dead.

This is a 16 port POE BVTech switch with about a year and a half of use. But this is not my warning.

My Warning - Do NOT rely upon one switch for everything. It's great to have everything on a 48 port switch right? Yeah....until the power supply fails for no good reason and you find yourself patching together anything that you can find to get back online. When we start talking cameras and security, this is big.

Because of the way that I built my network, I was able to bring everything back online with some patching. Computers, cameras, and phone back within minutes. New switch being delivered tomorrow. Do not short yourself on redundancy. I don't need 72 active ports for my house (pretty cool though), but being able to bypass and patch around a failed switch is important. When putting together your network, think about what you would do if you lost a port, a group of ports, or a switch.

As is said, one is none and two is one. Be prepared for the inevitable......
 

bp2008

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Hmm. My biggest PoE switch is 24 ports. 6 years old now. And I do not have enough PoE ports on smaller switches to fully work around it if it were to fail. But I could get close enough.
 

TonyR

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Yep. And stuff seems to fail at the most inopportune time, too...almost as if they themselves are "smart".:(

I've got some work to do in that area as well, having never really like "putting all my eggs in one basket". Heck, I don't care for umbrellas but oftentimes I take one....just so it won't rain.
 
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Got me thinking. So how would one go about this? In my case, I have all of my cameras and the BI computer on a sub-net of their own w/o internet connection. In my IT closet I have a 16-port switch that has 8 POE ports and 8 standard ports. The 8 POE ports feed 8 cameras. The 8 standard ports feed my BI computer, a few cameras that don't use POE, and a second POE switch in a remote location that feeds 3 POE cameras and a second desktop for that sub-net monitoring.

So maybe it would be prudent to get another switch that would feed the 16 port switch, the BI computer, the non-POE cameras, and the remote POE switch? Or keep the non-POE cameras on the 16 port switch. But that would put another load on my UPS.

To add more complication, I am adding a few more POE cameras to the mix in the next few months and will need another POE switch for them.
 

mat200

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I like:

1x switch for all non-PoE connectivity ( 24 port... lol, every port is connected in the house )
1x PoE switch for PoE connected devices

Have a smaller switch and poe switch for testing - which in a pinch I can swap into play by cutting some ports until a better replacement arrives
 
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@cage771 just for reference, was that BV Tech switch on a UPS. While a UPS COULD catch fire and take out the network closet, it might also reduce some strain on the connected devices.
 

cage771

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@cage771 just for reference, was that BV Tech switch on a UPS. While a UPS COULD catch fire and take out the network closet, it might also reduce some strain on the connected devices.
No....not on a UPS but that rack should be. Same with my BI server that is located elsewhere (need to move it to the rack area). However, the network rack has a Furman power conditioner and is the exact same that I trust my $2k guitar amps with. Honestly, I wasn't pushing the switch that hard at all. It just died. It happens.

As far as network layout goes, when I had to move my rack a few months ago I did it right and planned....much better than the hodge podge that is was. I have a two story house so each floor has its own 24 port patch panel and 24 port switch. Cameras have a dedicated patch panel and switch (was 16 port.....24 in the next hour or so). Everything is clean and labelled so a situation like a failed switch isn't hard to at least band aid until parts arrive. Due to having a handful of POE injectors and 8 port POE switches, I was able to get everything online again.

When thinking out network topology, if you need 30 ports, would a pair of 24's be better than a single 48? 6 drops being down is better than everything.
 

looney2ns

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There have been more than a few reports on here about BV-Tech switches dying early, some as few as 3-4 months.
I've used Netgears Pro business switches for roughly 20 years, never had a failure from one.
I've always used good surge protection, or UPS's with them.
Not to say's it's not possible for one to die.
 

Ford

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BV-Tech is cheap Chiner no-name junk. If you are foolish enough to use it in mission-critical roles, at least have a couple of spares on the shelf.

If you have the IT giblets, and enterprise gear, you can create a network that has full redundancy of every component (except for the cable/fiber modem). This is probably not realistic or necessary for most folks but it is pretty cool to unplug a switch and have no interruptions to the network.
 

cage771

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Agree, BV is Chinese sub-par switches. Use name brand switches like netgear.

@Mike and @Ford - I agree, BV Tech and TP Link are low end switches. I would not recommend them to a customer. I stick with HP and Cisco manged for that situation. For home use, they are overkill in price and performance in the same number of ports un managed. For my own reasons, I don't like Netgear....at all (my reasons from experience.....YMMV).

My key point is about redundancy and the ability to patch through as needed. I don't care what name is on the switch.....it will fail at some point. Power supplies fail. Ports go bad. If you are relying upon a single 48 port Cisco managed switch to run cameras, phones, and computers in your small office, what do you do when it fails? Well, you get a new one......but what do you do until you get the new one? Can you patch around to at least get your phones and computers back online? Can you get back to business?
 
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I bought a BV Tech 16 port POE switch a month ago powering my 9 cameras. I bought one with a fan in the case, non fanless. I bought it being prepared for it to fail sooner rather than later but was feeling the money pinch at the time due to buying ... 9 cameras and a BI computer and cabling, etc. I believe my next POE switch will be bought off eBay. Lots of 24-48 port POE enterprise switches there that I would like to take a crack at.
 

SouthernYankee

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I have 3 BV-tech 4 port POE+ switches that have been running for over a year, no problems so far.
I prefer small switches so that a failure does not take out the complete system. Small switches allows to spread out the wiring, less long runs.
 
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