Invid - Static or DHCP - Best Practices

[Hik2love]

Hi All,

I am about to do a 160 POE Invid deployment. Was wondering if anyone has any best practices suggestions? Currently this is my setup;

• (5) 48p Managed Unifi Switches
• Camera VLAN
• Unify gateway will be the DHCP server (DHCP Pool 192.x.x.50-192.x.x.250

The only devices other than cameras on this Vlan is (2) 128 channel NVR.

Right now I can see all the cameras up on the network. I was going to adopt the cameras to the NVR by floors. eg; Floor Ground-2 on NVR1 and Floor 3-4 on NVR2. All perimeter cameras will be on NVR2

Ive read and seen other sites do Static IP assignments on the cameras, but I think thats counter productive when your cameras are on its own isolated VLAN. BUt I am open to discussion that thinks otherwise.

Thank you very much in advance.

 

[Teken]

In general it comes down to the environment and what is in place now. This isn’t something you decide upon unless it’s your own network.

Its up to you or them to choose a working schema that makes sense to you. Having said this, in the vast majority of enterprise networks all hardware is left in DHCP mode.

Going this route allows the network admin to update and propagate all changes to the end devices. Hardware is simply assigned (reserved) IP addresses based on the MAC address.

This avoids IP conflicts and the potential of taking down an entire network. When people use a Static IP schema religious documentation and communication to the entire team / company must be done.

Regardless of the above anything that has to do with security is always running on its own physically isolated network. The use of VLANS is a great extra security layer but is routinely abused by the stupid!

No closed loop (isolated) network has ever been breached that has no outside connection. That can’t be said of the reverse or the use of VLAN’S.

Lastly, it’s not only good security practice but any appliance should be using a completely different IP range, subnet, scope, class.

 

[biggen]

I like to set DHCP reservations for my cameras and keep those reserved IPs in a text file I can reference. That way, if I need to connect to a specific camera to adjust a setting via its web GUI, its as simple as looking in the file to find the IP its on and then accessing the camera.

I don't know if you can even connect to each of those cameras remotely to configure them or if they have to be configured via the NVR.

 

[Left Coast Geek]

I usually add my cameras to DNS in addition to giving them a DHCP Reservation.

if your cameras are on a completely isolated network, you will not be able t configure them unless you have a workstation connected to that network.