Quickly losing and regaining signal.

S

ShortCourse

n3wb
Nov 7, 2021
4
5
Arizona
I've had Blue Iris on a dedicated Optiplex machine for about two years and have constantly been battling signal loss issues and am finally going to ask for help.
I can reboot everything and generally get decent stability for a few hours, but it will quickly start having camera drop and regain signal very quickly. Looking at the logs, I'm typically losing signal around 800+ times a day. After a few days of this, the signal loss is generally constant.

I started with just the one MokerLink switch, set-up as an air-gapped subnet, plugged into the Realtek NIC. I added another switch as i was wondering if there was a power issue and was going over the capacity of the one switch. I had the Netgear switch plugged into the MokerLink switch, which was then plugged into the Realtek NIC.

Yesterday I decided to dive back in and start troubleshooting again. I ended up reformatting the whole system and looking into if I originally setup the subnet incorrectly.
This go around, I struggled to even get things functional at all but ultimately ended up wondering if I was pushing the added NIC to its limits and tried to setup one switch to the added NIC and one to the on board port.

The machine has a static IP set by my home networks router. 192.168.1.30.
All of the cameras have static IPs set within the camera settings. 192.168.2.32-39.
Added NIC has a static IP of 192.168.2.31, a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and no gateway.
Onboard network port has a static IP of 192.168.2.29, a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and no gateway.
Each switch has four cameras on it.

Machine:
  • Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz
  • 16GB Ram
  • 4TB Seagate Drive
  • Added a Realtek PCI-E gigabit NIC - RTL811H
  • Running BlueIris 5.9.9.3 x64 on the SSD, not the storage drive.
  • CPU usage typical around 20%, GPU < 5%, Ram < 2GB.
Switches:
  • MokerLink 10 Port POE+ Switch (4 x 2.5G RJ45 ports + 2 x 10G SFP+ ports, 120W)
  • Netgear 8 Port POE+ Switch (8 x 1G ports, 62W)

Cameras
  • Amcrest IP8M-2496 (Qty: 8)

I'm still getting a lot of quick signal losses (sometimes just a second or two), but I'm unsure how to diagnose it any further.
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
 
ShortCourse said:
I started with just the one MokerLink switch, set-up as an air-gapped subnet, plugged into the Realtek NIC. I added another switch as i was wondering if there was a power issue and was going over the capacity of the one switch. I had the Netgear switch plugged into the MokerLink switch, which was then plugged into the Realtek NIC.
Click to expand...

That might be your trouble. Try running the other way around - MokerLink plugged into the Netgear as your backbone switch with various cams on either and see if the problem isolates to the MokerLink. That would be my first shot at it. Might also try forcing the 2.5G ports to 1G if you can.
 
They are not currently daisy chained and are both plugged into separate NICs. I will look into 2.5 to 1 gig, but I'm having the same issues on both switches and the Netgear is a 1 gig switch.

Here is a current log as well, rebooted this morning.image.png
 
I missed where you said that you'd later separated the switches. So mostly rules that out.

Do the cams all go down together at the same time or are the drops independently timed by cam?

How do you have the cams set up? Bitrate/FPS/etc.? Maybe take one or two down to lower settings and see if that makes a difference.

Physical connection would be another thing to look at. Don't know how you have things wired. Maybe plug one into a switch on a known good short cable and see if that makes a difference.
 
Whose make/model is the added nic?

Notice all the drop frames are coming from the cameras on that nic; the doorbell cam on the internal nic is not having any issues.

If possible place 7 cameras on 8 port switch and use the last port to connect directly to pc’s add-on nic. See if that helps those cameras from not having no signal drop outs.

Could you provide more details of how the pc is connected to the switches ? Are you connecting both pc nics to 16 port switch?
 
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The added card is a Realtek PCI-E gigabit NIC - RTL811H. Four of the cameras are on that card with the MokerLink link switch and the other four cameras are on the on-board Ethernet port, using the Netgear switch.

The signal loss issue doesn't seem tied to any one switch or network interface. I feel like it's either a camera setting or something with the subnet setup.

The one wifi doorbell camera has no issues.
 
Signal loss is typically caused by packet loss. Packet loss is typically caused by overloading a port, switch, and/or nic.

Depending on HOW you have your network connections between devices will affect your throughput, or no, of packets.

Having a two subnets on the LAN does not separate packets/traffic and may or may-not keep 192.168.2.# from reaching the internet.

You really haven't provided any detail of your network configuration and when additional information is requested its not complete nor detailed.

Why do you think it's your subnetting? If there's no routing involved you have a flat network with all packets possibly transversing your network. (limited only by the hopefully intelligent switching)

If you already 'feel' you have the problem identified, then no need to ask for advice or suggestions.
 
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