Alright more to this whole issue. I have done more troubleshooting because the issue seems to be not related to my earlier conclusion. It was just a fluke because things rebooted.
@NoloC you may be right
Essentially, I went plug my plug on my switch to see what I I had originally thought may be a short. Needless to say I was able to narrow it down to my server running vmware with my BI VM (among other things). I realize running BI in a VM is not the best option, but I have a pretty beefy server at my disposal.
In any case, when I unplug the vmware esx server all my camera appear functional and configurable within config tool and webUI. When I plug my server in they stop working and exhibit the behavior described earlier in this thread where they are not configurable and appear to be rebooting.
At first I thought it was a loop, but I re-traces every cable. Even enabled loop detection on my switch. I'm at a loss because the problem is really that simple. When server is plugged into my network, the camera don't work.
I even tried adding another switch directly plugged into another port on my router and connecting the server to that switch rather than my poe switch. Same behavior. Seems as long as this server is on my network it causes the cameras to not work.
@nayr I know I been tagging you a lot in this thread and I know you have a network background as well so was hoping you could maybe chime in with some ideas or if you have seen this before?