Checking In from Maryland

[mjb]

Hi,

Great forum. Look forward to participating. I operate two camera networks at different locations with a total of about 27 cameras, almost all Hikvision with a handful of Foscam and one Trendnet. Using BI and IPCamViewer for monitoring, Asus routers, EnGenius APs (for the Foscams) and Trendnet POE switches. Overtime I am moving toward a 100% POE approach, retiring the remaining Foscams. Some outbuildings at one site are connected to the main house by fiber (which is awesome) and the rest by Cat6. I've been experimenting with powerline adapters and hope to test out an integrated powerline/POE system in the next couple of weeks, built around the AsokaTech PL9660-POE.

Happy to share whatever insights and experience I can offer.

MJB

 

[Kenjusticejr]

Hi mjb,

I've been messin around with the powerline's too.... got about 10 of them, and went crazy hooking them to everything...seemed to give me some issues... One day, everything working good, next day, frame rates/bitrates are down..then back up again... I'm using the actiontek 500mbps adapters, and am not 100% convinced that they are any better than a wireless connection at my residence....

to give an example, I couldn't get more than about 200kB/s off of one yesterday, so I ran a 150ft piece of cat5 from my living room to my garage to a switch that is supplying 3 cameras.... Frame rates went up, bitrate went up, and video was much better...Then, as the day came to an end, I rolled up the piece of test cable and connected the powerline adapter back up, and WTF, frame rates and bit rates maintained.... EXCEPT for the fact that before I hooked up the cat5 directly, all 3 cameras suck'd... Only other thing I did was to tweak a couple settings in my buffalo router running DDWRT, but the settings I tweaked shouldn't have had anything to do with the cam connections via hardwire over powerline... SO..like I said, I'm not really sure what the problem with my connections is.

If you have any proven success or failures with the powerline adapters, I'd be interested in the statistics.

thanks

 

[mjb]

Same here. They work 95% of the time but I have to reset (unplug / plug in) about once per month. There is no substitute for direct Ethernet connections. I will let everyone know what happens with the integrated powerline/POE adapters.

 

[hmjgriffon]

Hi mjb,

I've been messin around with the powerline's too.... got about 10 of them, and went crazy hooking them to everything...seemed to give me some issues... One day, everything working good, next day, frame rates/bitrates are down..then back up again... I'm using the actiontek 500mbps adapters, and am not 100% convinced that they are any better than a wireless connection at my residence....

to give an example, I couldn't get more than about 200kB/s off of one yesterday, so I ran a 150ft piece of cat5 from my living room to my garage to a switch that is supplying 3 cameras.... Frame rates went up, bitrate went up, and video was much better...Then, as the day came to an end, I rolled up the piece of test cable and connected the powerline adapter back up, and WTF, frame rates and bit rates maintained.... EXCEPT for the fact that before I hooked up the cat5 directly, all 3 cameras suck'd... Only other thing I did was to tweak a couple settings in my buffalo router running DDWRT, but the settings I tweaked shouldn't have had anything to do with the cam connections via hardwire over powerline... SO..like I said, I'm not really sure what the problem with my connections is.

If you have any proven success or failures with the powerline adapters, I'd be interested in the statistics.

thanks

Running a network through the house's power system just seems like a bad idea IMHO but hey what do I know lol. It has obvious convenience but...

 

[fenderman]

Welcome to the forum, mjb!

 

[Mike]

Welcome to the forum @mjb! Are you the same MJB that I see has left a review on Amazon for the Hikvision 2032? If so, I clicked the "Yes" it was helpful button and beat you by 2 days lol Regardless, welcome to IPCT!

 

[dalepa]

Welcome to the craze...

Just ran a actiontec powerline-->POE 4 Switch==== 2 Hik 2032's Getting 15FPS from each 2032. I'll eventually will replace the powerline with cat5, but for now it works... I have a total of 4 powerlines with 1 running about 200ft. pretty impressed with the actiontec's...

Same here. They work 95% of the time but I have to reset (unplug / plug in) about once per month. There is no substitute for direct Ethernet connections. I will let everyone know what happens with the integrated powerline/POE adapters.

 

[n4gry]

I was just curious if anyone had tried the ZyXel Powerline AV 500 Mbps 4 Port Gigabit Switch Wall-plug Adapter with PLA4205 Powerline AV 500Mbps brand likethis one. That is the one I have been looking at.

 

[dalepa]

Been using 4 actiontec 500's for almost a year now, no issues. I have 1 4 port, but I one use 1 of the ports, so I would just get the single modules if I bought again.

I was just curious if anyone had tried the ZyXel Powerline AV 500 Mbps 4 Port Gigabit Switch Wall-plug Adapter with PLA4205 Powerline AV 500Mbps brand likethis one. That is the one I have been looking at.

 

[n4gry]

Been using 4 actiontec 500's for almost a year now, no issues. I have 1 4 port, but I one use 1 of the ports, so I would just get the single modules if I bought again.

That's KEWL!! and at a better price too...

 

[Kenjusticejr]

Ok, here is a wee bit of my personal experience...feel free to comment on it... I completely over estimated wireless capabilities... have a REALLY nice router, buffalo running DDWRT, and decent wireless on my computer...even though it all says 54 or 100mb/s, I'm not getting even a small fraction of that.... Suppose I was just under a false assumption... Moral of the story is: frame rates and bitrates were screwey and driving me crazy...weird stuff happening between 3 identical models of cameras with identical settings... SO, with every combination of powerline, wifi, and hardwire, I've found out that obviously hardwire is best... powerline 500mb/s are next in line and the disappointing fact that wifi wouldn't get me enough bandwidth to support anything consistently....


If anyone wants to chime in with some stats on powerline vs. wifi speeds, I'd appreciate it... Also, some recommended wifi settings that may help my issue would be cool too... Otherwise, I realize it's not the best thread for all of this information..but anyone who looks it is welcome to voice an opinion or experience.

Otherwise, no, I haven't tried any powerline adapters other than a cheap trendnet I had a while back that worked fine and the 10 actiontec that I have... (ran cat6 and am only using 3 of them now)

 

[n4gry]

Information from my experience:
All my cameras are set to 15 FPS (Frames per second) and the bit rate is set at 5120K/bits per second (Kbps) … That means that I need 5 Megabitsper second bandwidth per camera… So fourcameras will equal about ~20 Megabits. (All of them being HD 1080 cameras) It does not matter if they are wired, power line or Wi-Fi they want that much bandwidth plus overhead. I am using a Cisco EA-4500 router and have (from time to time) four Wi-Fi cameras going into it. I have no slowdowns or problems what so ever but that router can handle 450 Megabits on 802.11N alone not counting the G, or B. I have not used the power line stuff yet but I am thinking about it…..
Bottom line is cameras use more bandwidth than most people think.

I hope that helps a little, I am not familiar with the buffalo router nor what it is capable of.

 

[Semper Gumby]

We measured wireless Ethernet speeds in one of my classes. Wireless has over 50% overhead (802.11 b,g and probably n). 802.11 g is rated at 54 Mbps, we could only get about 20 Mbps throughput with the computers 2-5 feet away from each other. The throughput will go down as the distance between the device and the access point increases.

 

[n4gry]

Here is a video running tests on the three types of connections...

 

[Kenjusticejr]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BUFFALO-WHR-HP-G54-TOMATO-WIFI-WIRELESS-ROUTER-REPEATER-ACCESS-POINT-AMP-BRIDGE-/301156769559?pt=COMP_EN_Routers&hash=item461e579f17

that's the spec on the buffalo I'm running..not made anymore, but if you dig into it, you'll find they outpower 99% of other routers for wifi..I used them primarily for long range wifi..and blasting through concrete walls, block walls, and setting up directional antennas for hitting access points a mile away...

the firmware I am running is here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

It is some good stuff, love it... can take the buffalo router and crank up the wireless on it to amazing ranges... can get 500 feet from my house and still see my wireless network with no problems....anyway..i digress...


some good informational posts previous to this one, thanks for all of the insight... very helpful..

 

[hmjgriffon]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BUFFALO-WHR-HP-G54-TOMATO-WIFI-WIRELESS-ROUTER-REPEATER-ACCESS-POINT-AMP-BRIDGE-/301156769559?pt=COMP_EN_Routers&hash=item461e579f17

that's the spec on the buffalo I'm running..not made anymore, but if you dig into it, you'll find they outpower 99% of other routers for wifi..I used them primarily for long range wifi..and blasting through concrete walls, block walls, and setting up directional antennas for hitting access points a mile away...

the firmware I am running is here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

It is some good stuff, love it... can take the buffalo router and crank up the wireless on it to amazing ranges... can get 500 feet from my house and still see my wireless network with no problems....anyway..i digress...


some good informational posts previous to this one, thanks for all of the insight... very helpful..

Simple rule of thumb, wireless sucks for anything except surfing the internet, everything sucks for cameras except good ol hard wired ethernet.

 

[Kenjusticejr]

n4gry, thanks a billion for that video...was a nice comparison of the three... confirmed what my trial and error and current network situation was doing...