Combine POE with non POE switches

[StratRider]

Searched here and googled a bit this morning already and either find none or conflicting information.
With a mixture of POE and non POE cams and switches - does it matter if the POE switch is before or after the non-POE?

 

[SouthernYankee]

Does not matter. he order of the switches does not matter. Just make sure you are not overloading the data rate on the switches, this should not happen on newer switches.

On my network I had a regular switch that connected to the BI computer and then to multiple POE switches.

 

[catcamstar]

Searched here and googled a bit this morning already and either find none or conflicting information.
With a mixture of POE and non POE cams and switches - does it matter if the POE switch is before or after the non-POE?

Hi @StratRider, well, I had to re-read your question a couple of times, but I'm still not sure what you are trying to achieve

So first things first:

• a POE Cam can only get its power from a POE Switch (or POE injector)
• a non POE switch will never give power to any (POE) device ever
• hence putting a POE cam to a non-POE switch will render it useless, except if you provide it power over a POE injector.

So, networking wise, a switch is a switch, and you can indeed mix-up POE switches with non-POE switches. There is nothing wrong with having one main POE switch (with 2 cams), and 1 downstream non POE switch (with playstation, NAS, BI pc, NVR, ...) and 2 more downstream POE switches with all your cams. The IP traffic will find its way to your NVR/BI pc/...

But power-wise: POE devices need to be connected to a POE switch.

Happy Camming!
CC

 

[StratRider]

Thanks guys.
I have a POE switch for the POE cams but some of the indoor cams do have their own power supplies and I wanted to keep any POE slots open when possible for future POE cams.
I grabbed a non-POE switch for a buck at a garage sale and even snagged 2 old routers for a buck too.
Thought about extending my wifi into the garage with one of the wifi routers but also read that old routers can be used as non-POE switches too.

 

[catcamstar]

Thanks guys.
I have a POE switch for the POE cams but some of the indoor cams do have their own power supplies and I wanted to keep any POE slots open when possible for future POE cams.
I grabbed a non-POE switch for a buck at a garage sale and even snagged 2 old routers for a buck too.
Thought about extending my wifi into the garage with one of the wifi routers but also read that old routers can be used as non-POE switches too.

"Old" routers (with internal LAN ports) can indeed be re-used as switches, but keep in mind that a router is designed to route, and a switch is designed to switch. It all has to do with "bandwidth" on the back-end bus. Will it work? For sure. Will it work with 16 fullHD streaming cams? I doubt it, especially when slamming that huge stream across your house over wifi

But it's a smart move to "reserve" the native POE switch ports for a "real" IP cam on POE, but you do have to watch the full power-over-all-combined-POE-ports capability of your switch. Some (cheap) POE models can only raise to (for example 48W), and with 5 cams at (for example) 10W, you run out of juice quickly. Also note that day and night consumption differs (something to do with IR lightning and such). Hence plugging a non-POE cam into your switch will give "more" power for the other ports.

Happy Camming!
CC