HIKVision NVR with additional POE router

[cctvnewbie]

Hi guys, is it ok to run a D[FONT=Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif]S-7732NI-E4/16P with around 5 cameras directly connected to the POE ports on the back, and then run another 7 cameras connected via a POE switch with the switch then connected to the POE ports on the back?

The additional 7 cameras are located quite far away from the main NVR so running 7 seperate cables out there is going to be an issue.

For info, this has been setup previously for a friend of a friend and all but 2 cameras were fine, 1 camera connected directly to NVR & 1 via switch had blown due to water ingress. (Bad install!)

Just need to know if the ports on the back can take 7 cameras through one port.

Thanks[/FONT]

 

[nayr]

what cameras? 7 1080P cameras at full quality will be too close for comfort on a single 100Mbit port.. does that have 2 GigE ports on it? if so use one to uplink to a GigE port on your branched switch and you will have ample throughput to max out your NVR completely.

if you detune the cameras you could get it to fit within the 100Mbps bandwidth profile, but that kinda sucks and then limits your ability to upgrade to higher resolution cameras later on.

as a general rule of thumb, most HD cameras @ full quality top out ~10Mbps.. UltraHD (4k) ~20Mbps.. so 70Mbps would be pushing it, not great with little room for overhead or additional cameras.. I like to keep it under 50% duty cycle so you have enough overhead to use the WebUI, do file transfers, monitoring, and other network tasks without risking causing a bottleneck and dropping frames.. its really easy to tear up a 100Mbit network now days when most drives can write at 150Mbit minimum.

 

[cctvnewbie]

Hi, thanks for the reply

The cams are all hikvison bullets, 6 X 2CD2032 (3mp) and 1 2CD2042 (4mp) not sure what bandwidth they will take up?

This NVR only has the one LAN port which is the gigabit one, on the back. If I was to use this for the switch, how can I get the NVR to talk to the outside world?

 

[nayr]

with 3 & 4MP cameras I presume your going to end up close to that 10Mbit each.. likely 7-8Mbit each depending quality settings.. 2MP seems good at about 5-6Mbit with little improvement going higher.. real world, but I dont like using those numbers for planning.. best to stick with absolute max so you dont have issues out of the gate.

well branch your switch off the LAN backbone then, whats the NVR plugged into? a GigE switch/modem/router with a spare port? You'll have to be cautious about saturating that GigE interface, if you want to download a video off the NVR might be best to plug a USB drive into it and not send it over the network.

 

[cctvnewbie]

Yeah your right it's too much data going through that 1 port.

The NVR isn't connected great to be honest, it's connect via a power line adaptor to a BT home hub, which I very much doubt has a gigabit port on it as it's an old one.

My friend has two choices i think. First have the 7 cameras to the lan port and not view them over the Internet. Or alternatively upgrade or add a gigabit switch into the mix so the NVR connects as follows

Broadband > power line > gigabit switch > NVR >

And then put the cameras from the POE switch into the new gigabit switch after the power line. That should work.

Not ideal though, assuming the BT HUB or alternative replacement, has a gigabit capability is it possible to have the cameras connected via this to the lab on the NVR and have the cameras accessed over the Internet?

 

[nebo]

@cctvnewbie thanks much for this thread and I hope my questions don't derail your topic.

what cameras? 7 1080P cameras at full quality will be too close for comfort on a single 100Mbit port.. does that have 2 GigE ports on it? if so use one to uplink to a GigE port on your branched switch and you will have ample throughput to max out your NVR completely.

if you detune the cameras you could get it to fit within the 100Mbps bandwidth profile, but that kinda sucks and then limits your ability to upgrade to higher resolution cameras later on.

as a general rule of thumb, most HD cameras @ full quality top out ~10Mbps.. UltraHD (4k) ~20Mbps.. so 70Mbps would be pushing it, not great with little room for overhead or additional cameras.. I like to keep it under 50% duty cycle so you have enough overhead to use the WebUI, do file transfers, monitoring, and other network tasks without risking causing a bottleneck and dropping frames.. its really easy to tear up a 100Mbit network now days when most drives can write at 150Mbit minimum.

with 3 & 4MP cameras I presume your going to end up close to that 10Mbit each.. likely 7-8Mbit each depending quality settings.. 2MP seems good at about 5-6Mbit with little improvement going higher.. real world, but I dont like using those numbers for planning.. best to stick with absolute max so you dont have issues out of the gate.

well branch your switch off the LAN backbone then, whats the NVR plugged into? a GigE switch/modem/router with a spare port? You'll have to be cautious about saturating that GigE interface, if you want to download a video off the NVR might be best to plug a USB drive into it and not send it over the network.

@nayr can you please help me better understand what you are saying as it applies to what I am looking at? I apologize for such beginner questions, but your posts are the closest I have found to help me so far.

So LTN8716-P8 says it has network 10/100/1000M which I looked up and means it supports Gigabit speeds. Not sure how many GigE ports? NVR spec is 16ch IP@160Mbps. I will only have 2 POE switches and an NVR on my network. I have no home internet in the boondocks, so no notifications and no computers. Just storing recordings on the NVR. Keep it simple for stupid is the motto for this project.

If I put a POE switch in a barn and garage with the NVR at the house, what is my limit for the number and speed/res etc. of the cameras from each POE switch back to a single non-POE port on the NVR? The house would have 3or4 POE cameras directly to the NVR POE ports.
I hope this makes some sort of sense. Please reel me in from left field, or tell me to go park cars if I'm a lost cause......

My other option is to omit POE switches at barn and garage and pull 200' and 100' homeruns respectively, to cameras at the barn and garage. I have been recommended both ways, both with benefits, and just weighing the options and trying to learn how the switches would work out.
Thanks much!

 

[cctvnewbie]

well branch your switch off the LAN backbone then, whats the NVR plugged into? a GigE switch/modem/router with a spare port? You'll have to be cautious about saturating that GigE interface, if you want to download a video off the NVR might be best to plug a USB drive into it and not send it over the network.

How do I branch the switch off the LAN backbone? apologies if a dumb question.

Happy to buy what ever is required, only problem I have is I cannot fix the cable mess that has been created already

 

[nayr]

I presumed you had your NVR plugged into a switch on that GigE port, not PowerLine.. that makes things a bit more complicated... you could run a really simple/cheap 5 port GigE switch right off your NVR so you can branch it off to your camera sub-switch from that point and stay off the powerline network.

@nebo, most NVR's with built in PoE have them on 100Mbit Ethernet because individual cameras dont come close to maxing it out... if you start consolidating streams on a single port, like with a remote switch, you can quickly saturate 100Mbit... but if its just 3-4 cameras your well within reason even on 100Mbit port, its when your at 7-8 cameras here like the OP that your approaching the danger zone..

lets say 4 cameras @ 10Mbit each, thats a total of 40Mbit and thats less than 50% of 100Mbit's capabilities, so that's a completely safe setup with ample throughput for growth and is unlikely to start dropping frames when the network see's sudden bursts of data.

 

[nebo]

Thanks @nayr and @cctvnewbie for the discussion!

 

[cctvnewbie]

I presumed you had your NVR plugged into a switch on that GigE port, not PowerLine.. that makes things a bit more complicated... you could run a really simple/cheap 5 port GigE switch right off your NVR so you can branch it off to your camera sub-switch from that point and stay off the powerline network.

The power line is a bit of a hiccup here but is needed

Ok so i could do it like this... router > powerline > giga switch > NVR
And then from the cameras connected to a POE switch they could go like this... Cameras > POE Switch > Giga Switch > NVR

would that work?

I know its not ideal with the powerlines in the mix but there really is no option around the power line.

 

[nayr]

yeah that should work just fine, the powerline is fine for streaming video off your NVR, its better than wireless.

if you have to download video off the NVR I would do it directly to a USB device so you dont risk congesting the powerline or NVR's uplink port... ie, if the police want some footage dont transfer it to your computer and copy it to a thumb drive.. put the thumb right into the nvr and save it directly without transiting the network.

thats the only likely scenario that could cause throughput issues, as long as you just run cameras off that PoE Switch.. and of course your PoE switch needs at least one GigE port for uplinking to your NVR GigE switch.

 

[cctvnewbie]

yeah that should work just fine, the powerline is fine for streaming video off your NVR, its better than wireless.

if you have to download video off the NVR I would do it directly to a USB device so you dont risk congesting the powerline or NVR's uplink port... ie, if the police want some footage dont transfer it to your computer and copy it to a thumb drive.. put the thumb right into the nvr and save it directly without transiting the network.

thats the only likely scenario that could cause throughput issues, as long as you just run cameras off that PoE Switch.. and of course your PoE switch needs at least one GigE port for uplinking to your NVR GigE switch.

Brilliant, thats a lot cheaper then a new NVR box which was being considered, also a lot easier to setup too.

just to confirm the camera POE switch is a TP Link SG1008PE which has 8 gigabit ports http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-42_TL-SG1008PE.html so this will uplink the cameras ok, this will link to another switch which again will be gigabit, this will have the broadband (via powerline) & the NVR. The NVR will then be connected to the switch by the LAN port.

All cameras, I assume, will have to be manually added via the LAN port as they will not be plug & play?

Have I got it right?

 

[nayr]

Sounds like you got it, If you set all the cameras to DHCP first it should be plug and play after that point.. you'll have to scan the network but your NVR should auto-find the cameras on the LAN interface.. but if it dont just tell it the IP and it should go from there.

 

[cctvnewbie]

Sounds like you got it, If you set all the cameras to DHCP first it should be plug and play after that point.. you'll have to scan the network but your NVR should auto-find the cameras on the LAN interface.. but if it dont just tell it the IP and it should go from there.

Oh wow now youve thrown a curve ball...Set the cameras to DHCP? what is assigning the IP address? the router I assume as it is connected via the switch?

In that case the cameras which are currently 192.168.254.xx (as per the NVR) will all move over to the 192.168.1.xx range as per the router & rest of the network?

 

[nayr]

the ones plugged into the PoE ports are on there own subnet, the cameras plugged into the LAN will share your LAN subnet..

so anything plugged into Built-in PoE will still be 192.168.254.xx and anything going through the LAN interface will be on your 192.168.1.xx subnet.. so your new cams will share the ip space of your lan.

it'll work just fine as long as nothing on your LAN tries to use the cameras IP's; thus why you want to use your LAN DHCP Server or ensure its configured in such a way that it wont allocate the IP's you have reserved for your cameras.

 

[cctvnewbie]

Thanks for confirming that, I was expecting the Poe cams to be on the NVR subnet but I don't make that clear.

I can also see why having DHCP on for the cams connected to the GigE switch is worthwhile, although could I manually assign up address in the high range say 192.168.1.2xx knowing that this network is a relatively small one? Or is it not worth it?

 

[nayr]

unless you configure a range for your DHCP server that excludes the block you set aside for your IPCameras dont do it, IP Conflicts are a bitch to trace down.. even on small networks.

Many DHCP Servers have the option to do static mapping, so it will always give your cameras the same IP address and will never give those IP's to any other device.. thats the best way to do it, if you ever have to put the camera on a bench for testing it wont need to be reconfigured for network access.. I hate having to change a bunch of network settings just so I can connect to a device to change its network settings back to what I need.

 

[cctvnewbie]

Ok that's a good shout actually

You sir have been a great help today, thank you so much. I can't wait to get out there with a 5 port GigE switch now and get it all going.

 

[alastairstevenson]

If you set all the cameras to DHCP first it should be plug and play after that point

Nope - sorry to disagree, but best to simply use SADP to find the LAN-connected cameras and set each to a fixed LAN IP address.
The cameras will be starting off having a fixed address in 192.168.254.0/24 segment as the PoE switch has been connected to an NVR PoE port.
SADP will find them even from those addresses when the PoE switch they are on is connected to the LAN, or in reality the NVR LAN port is plugged in to the switch.

*edit*

Thanks for confirming that, I was expecting the Poe cams to be on the NVR subnet but I don't make that clear.

If I've understood the 'before' status I believe that's correct.

 

[nayr]

@alastairstevenson, that is a fine approach as long as you ensure your dhcp server will not assign out the addresses you have configured on your lan space.. by default most are configured to be fully dhcp and if you throw a few static's in the mix without telling the dhcp server you can have IP conflicts as the dhcp server has no idea something is already on that IP.. relying on big address space for lack of collisions is a bad strategy.. all you need is one broken device that reboots with a new mac address each time and you'll burn through the entire subnet given enough time.

I dhcp everything and have not statically assigned a network address on anything other than a router in eons.. network autoconfiguration is worth the setup.