Dual NICs Question

samplenhold

samplenhold

IPCT+ Member
Aug 8, 2018
8,087
28,612
Spring, Texas
Setup:

So I have a second NIC card in my dedicated BI Win10 PC. The NIC on the motherboard is connected to a switch (sub-net 1) that has access to the router/modem supplied by my internet provider and therefor has access to my home LAN and the internet. The NIC pci card is connected to a POE switch (Sub-net 3) that all of the IP cameras are connected to. This switch is not connected to the router/modem.

On a different floor in my house I have another Win10 PC that has dual NICs on the motherboard. One is connected to the switch (sub-net 1) used for the home LAN and connection to the internet. The other NIC is connected to the POE switch (sub-net 3) that is connected to the BI Computer and all of the IP cameras. This allows me to access the IP camera's web page without having to go upstairs and get on the BI computer. I also run UI3 on this computer to view BI.

Question:

Which NIC is the UI3 connection using? And therefore which sub-net/switch is UI3 using? Is there a way I can figure this out?

The reason I ask is that sometimes UI3 really lags, frame rate drops to 1 or 0, and I get the dreaded orange clock in the upper right of the screen. I am wondering if this is because the UI3 connection is fighting for bandwidth with the 18 cameras on the sub-net 3 suppling video at 15 FPS to BI.

All switches are gigabit switches.
 
BI/UI3 should only be able to access the cameras via the PCI NIC on the BI Win10 PC that's connected to sub-net 3.

On your BI WIn10 PC, if you open a command prompt and do a trace route to the IP of a camera (i.e. tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx), it should show you the route it takes to get to the camera. I'd imagine that hop #1 would be the IP address of the PCI NIC and hop #2 would be the camera itself.
 
Thanks AB. After reading your reply it caused me to look at the UI3 browser and it shows it is connecting to the BI PC sub-net 1 IP address. So I guess I have my answer.

So I still do not know why I get lag and 1-2 frame rate and the orange clock on my UI3 display since it is not fighting for bandwidth with the cameras bitrates.
 
It could be because you have two computers, both with dual NICs, and both are connected to your internet LAN and the POE LAN. Either the BI PC is confused which NIC to send the UI3 streams through, or the 2nd PC is confused which NIC to receive the streams from. Or it's going through both and creating a loop or something like that. Unplug the 2nd PC from the POE LAN, and only plug it in temporarily when you want to access the cam's web page to change settings.
 
Also, in BI settings, web server tab, make sure the LAN IP is set to your internet LAN subnet 1, and not the POE LAN subnet 3.
 
samplenhold said:
So I still do not know why I get lag and 1-2 frame rate and the orange clock on my UI3 display since it is not fighting for bandwidth with the cameras bitrates.
Click to expand...
My network is flat -- no isolated subnet for cameras -- and I occasionally see the orange clock in BI, especially in Safari. Not so much with Chrome/Firefox. Not sure what causes it either.
 
Last edited:
Thanks all for your input.
 
You could confirm the routing table on both the Blue Iris Machine and the other Dual Nic machine are clear about how to talk to each other with Network Metric.

in a CMD window (on each machine) type: route print
see if the interfaces have the same value for metric
if they do go into Network Settings, TCP/IP, Advanced and manually set the METRIC value of one interface higher so your preferred interface is used if both are potential routes.

Normally this is used to ensure devices talk across the network with the highest bandwidth and so forth (see how Windows calculates the value here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-the-automatic-metric-feature-for-ipv4-routes )
but if your network is pretty flat and you have the same speed in every direction, maybe it resulted in the same value and the devices keep talking back and forth randomly on different networks.

Also as @aristobrat mentioned it could just be an occasional network/BI hiccup.

Since I have this up on a screen on my desk all day I see the orange clock a handful of times per day. I just figured its one of these problems:
1. I'm on a wi-fi connection
2. Some of my cameras are H.265 encoded which I think can cause problems for BI/Intel decoding
3. my computer is doing something heavy and had to take a break refreshing chrome or
4. My BI computer is an i7-2600k that is getting old and tired.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom