NVR network setup with cameras on POE switch and 1 in NVR

[Mike_C]

Hi,

I'm new to the IPCamTalk forum and have already gained a great deal of knowledge from the community. I've done tons of research and currently in the process of running my outdoor ethernet cables and getting ready to order my equipment.

My setup will be as follows:
- 3 cameras monitoring rear entry ways and back patio
- 1 camera monitoring front porch

I'm running new outdoor cables for the 3 backyard cams which will connect to a POE switch in the basement (den area).Then I'll have a single Ethernet (pre-wired) connection from the switch to the LAN port of the 8ch NVR which is located in a separate large utility\storage room. NVR will be connected to the router that's already in this room. I know it's easiest to connect all the cams to the switch BUT...the location of the front porch cam makes it much more convenient to use an Ethernet cable that's already pre-wired into the utility room where the NVR will be.

My questions:
1) Is it possible to have cams both connected to the switch and the directly to the NVR?
2) If so, what are the disadvantages or potential issues this could cause?

If it's not advised to do this, I'll just plan to run a cable from the front porch cam and have it terminate in the same place as the others. This will also help me finalize whether I go with the single LAN port NVR or the 8 port POE NVR.

Thanks in advance!

 

[alastairstevenson]

1) Is it possible to have cams both connected to the switch and the directly to the NVR?

Yes, that would work OK.

2) If so, what are the disadvantages or potential issues this could cause?

Without another switch in the utility there would be nowhere to plug in the cable from the porch camera.
Unless the NVR has PoE ports and the porch camera can be plugged in to one of them.
If not - an additional switch in the utilty room, to which the NVR and porch camera are connected, and the cable to the switch in the den.
Both switches should ideally either have a Gigabit uplink port to connect to the den, or have all Gigabit ports, as you'll be aggregating camera traffic in the uplink, probably adding to it over time such that a 10/100Mbps switch might get a bit congested.

 

[Mike_C]

Really appreciate the response. As I thought it through it some more this morning after your suggestion, you are correct. I'll need to add an additional switch in the utility room. I'll be honest...I'm a bit foggy on some of my Networking 101 skills, but it's slowly coming back to me. I found this diagram which is very close to what my layout will look like. Only difference is...I would plug my NVR into the switch instead of directly to the router to try and keep the IP Cam traffic isolated.

 

[dt-cam]

In a perfect setup, you want the IP cameras to go through the least amount of switches and have their own cable. The more cameras on a single cable, the more data is being crammed on the same cable, with enough cameras on a single run, the bottleneck will be your cable. However, I don't see an issue with running a few cameras on a single cable if you only have 1 existing cable to a specific location. What I recommend is connecting the uplink cable of the PoE switch directly into your router and bypass that black switch, if possible.

 

[Mike_C]

In a perfect setup, you want the IP cameras to go through the least amount of switches and have their own cable. The more cameras on a single cable, the more data is being crammed on the same cable, with enough cameras on a single run, the bottleneck will be your cable. However, I don't see an issue with running a few cameras on a single cable if you only have 1 existing cable to a specific location. What I recommend is connecting the uplink cable of the PoE switch directly into your router and bypass that black switch, if possible.

I was wondering about that. I was under the impression that you want to try and keep your camera and NVR traffic isolated as much as possible (on their own dedicated switch if possible). Plugging directly into the router wouldn't interfere with other network traffic internet surfing, streaming, gaming, etc ?? If I could eliminate the additional switch and run them into the router, that would be ideal

 

[dt-cam]

I was wondering about that. I was under the impression that you want to try and keep your camera and NVR traffic isolated as much as possible (on their own dedicated switch if possible). Plugging directly into the router wouldn't interfere with other network traffic internet surfing, streaming, gaming, etc ?? If I could eliminate the additional switch and run them into the router, that would be ideal

The best thing you can do is to isolate the camera traffic on its own network (either physically or via VLANs, but VLANs would be another topic and would require additional hardware, most likely). Yes, the less packets that pass through the router, the better, but sometimes you have no choice. If you could find a way to plug the NVR into the PoE switch and not the router, that would be better, but might not make a huge difference in your setup.

What I would do is...

Modem<-------->Router (or combo modem/router)<------------>Regular network switch for network devices<---------------->16 port PoE switch for NVR and all my cameras

This would make it so that the camera packets can stay on the same switch and go right to the NVR for recording/etc vs having to travel through multiple switches then through the router then to the NVR. If possible, I recommend having gigabit for the entire network, but if anything, make sure the port between the NVR and the switch you are plugging it into is gigabit. Most IP cameras are still 10/100, which is fine, but remember, the cable/port carrying all the camera traffic to the NVR will perform better if it is gigabit since it will be carrying more than 1 camera's worth of traffic. Of course things change in your favor if you are recording motion only because less data will be flowing. I typically record 24/7.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Plugging directly into the router wouldn't interfere with other network traffic internet surfing, streaming, gaming, etc ??

It can affect internet use - depending on the capabilities of the specific router model, and how it handles it's LAN ports.
And it certainly will if the router LAN ports are 10/100Mbps and not Gigabit.
Switches will generally handle full aggregate traffic from all ports on their backplane, so it's generally best to run your higher volume traffic through these if you have them available.