Offline (Network Abnormal) error message

[woodsie]

I wanted to throw this one to the board and see if anyone has any good ideas for troubleshooting.

I have a Hikvision DS-7608NI-SE/P NVR with six DS-2CD4065F box cameras attached to it in "Plug and Play" mode. Most of the Ethernet cable runs are 75 to 100 meters however I have one camera at 130 meters with an Axis T8129 PoE Extender at 97 meters in order to split the run into two <100 meter segments.

Most of my cameras have been up for 4 days now with no problems however my camera on the 130 meter run using the repeater runs for 3 to 12 hours and then shuts down and shows "Offline (Network Abnormal)" on the camera management page of the NVR's web GUI. If I unplug the camera at the NVR and plug it back in to cycle the power it comes right back up and runs normally until it fails again later in the day.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to trouble shoot this error. My thoughts so far have been:

1) A poorly crimped or punched down connection somewhere along the path between the NVR and the camera. I'm not sure on this theory I figure the camera would either connect or it wouldn't.

2) The PoE repeater is too close to the 100 meter limit. Not too confident in this theory as Axis' documentation says you can do 100 meters for each segment.

3) The PoE repeater is not providing the camera with sufficient power. Not too confident in this theory either as Axis' documentation says you should still be able to provide up to 12 watts of power at 200 meters with a regular PoE source. The DS-2CD4065F camera maxes out at 9 watts.

Those are my thoughts so far. Does anyone have any other ideas on what could cause this error?

 

[bp2008]

Maybe the network cable has copper-clad aluminum (CCA) conductors, which are inferior to pure copper. Or maybe it is slightly damaged due to excessive bending or being pulled too hard. Or maybe the cable is run too close to AC power lines, making the connection noisy and unreliable.

Some diagnostic tests you could try:
1) Try swapping the problematic camera with a known good camera to see if the problem follows the camera or the cable.
2) Try a different PoE repeater, or even a simple RJ45 coupler. Sometimes you can get away with going over the specced distance, though it helps to do it with one continuous run of cable and not with a coupler in the middle somewhere
3) Try swapping the network ports on the NVR so the problematic run is on a known-good port.

 

[woodsie]

Maybe the network cable has copper-clad aluminum (CCA) conductors, which are inferior to pure copper. Or maybe it is slightly damaged due to excessive bending or being pulled too hard. Or maybe the cable is run too close to AC power lines, making the connection noisy and unreliable.

Some diagnostic tests you could try:
1) Try swapping the problematic camera with a known good camera to see if the problem follows the camera or the cable.
2) Try a different PoE repeater, or even a simple RJ45 coupler. Sometimes you can get away with going over the specced distance, though it helps to do it with one continuous run of cable and not with a coupler in the middle somewhere
3) Try swapping the network ports on the NVR so the problematic run is on a known-good port.

Thank you for the ideas. The cable is Mohawk LAN 6 cable which is solid copper. Definitely a possibility of a bad bend during the pulling. I think I can rule out noise from AC power lines as 3 other cameras follow the same trunk and there is no AC power lines anywhere after the point that this one splits off. That's a good thought though.

1) I will try this next week. The camera is 20+ feet up so I'll have to wait until I have access to a boom lift again unfortunately.

2) Just to get up and going, I had it ran 130 meters uninterrupted with NO repeater. The camera was in fact able to send an image to the NVR which allowed me to get it pointed and focused however it was definitely struggling (skipping, lagging, ect) with the higher bit rate main stream and it often failed to come up when viewed through the NVR's web GUI. It did stay online in this state for 2 full days before I was able to come back and insert the repeater at 97 meters. Once I installed the repeater, pulling up the live feed became MUCH more responsive and the aforementioned issues disappeared. I don't know if the lack of "Network Abnormal" states in the 2 days before I put the repeater in was due to luck or not.

3) That's a good idea. I will try that too.