Can I route POE cams through a separate POE switch?

L

Legolad

n3wb
May 17, 2016
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Can this configuration be made to work?
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We are remodeling our old home for resale. When we lived there, we didn't care that the NVR was in our living room, but our agent says it's not a good look.

We have installed a small POE switch (NETGEAR GS308EP) in the living room and plugged the four camera lines into that. A single ethernet run connects that switch to the NVR which is now upstairs in a closet.
We are having trouble viewing the cameras now (could be unrelated to this new configuration). I just wanted to confirm that this is a legitimate configuration.

Anyone else doing this?
 
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As far as powering the cams and networking-wise it's OK. Whether the NVR can work that way to access those cams or not depends on it. Which seems to be not or requiring different setup. I don't know the Hikvision NVRs well enough to help you with that side. Someone else here probably can.
 
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Im no networking pro so take this for what its worth. Best to get a more experienced opinion like from @TonyR

1- On a dahua NVR you can set the onboard PoE ports to pass-through. So yes you could use an NVR PoE port to the external switch, but you still have the issue of each port can only put out so much power and likely anything over 2-3 cameras would exceed this. (probably your problem) You would also defeat the on-board PoE benefit of plug n play and security

2 Best to place another switch near the NVR and plug the NVR and the router into it
 
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bigredfish said:
So yes you could use an NVR PoE port to the external switch, but you still have the issue of each port can only put out so much power and likely anything over 2-3 cameras would exceed this. (probably your problem) You would also defeat the on-board PoE benefit of plun n play and security
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He's not powering the switch/cams from the NVR. The NetGear is separately powered and supplying POE+ to the cams. That side is all good. The question is whether the NVR can see those on-network cams vs cams hanging off if its ports directly and/or how it needs to be set up to do that.
 
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Gotcha, more than 2 and it will be very iffy that the NVR PoE will assign that many IPs to a single port

I would do the pass-through - "Bridge Mode"
bridgemode.jpg

But all cameras would now be on the LAN network segment. So if he was previously using the NVR PoE ports and they were all assigned 10.1.1.x and are now for instance 192.168.1.x he will need to reconfigure

Can the OP show us his NVR camera registration page? That would help
 
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Yes, if no "bridge mode" available, I agree that cameras powered by an external POE switch and NOT the NVR's POE ports would need to set up with unique, static IP's in the same subnet as the NVR's LAN but outside of the router's DHCP pool. The NVR's LAN port would be connected to that same POE switch.
 
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From my experience, NVR has to be in bridge mode, which turns it into a switch. Then you can connect any switch/cam to it. I had to reset my NVR after putting it into bridge mode because it was doing some funky stuff. After that the IP cams was able to be picked up my the NVR.
 
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Wow...This is great. Thank you all for the insights.

I can confirm that the external switch is a POE switch and is powering the cameras.
I can further confirm that the previous setup had the cameras attached directly to the NVR.
Lastly, in the previous setup, the NVR was set up with 2 networks: 1 for the cameras and 1 for the household LAN.

Side note:
My plan was to change the setup once I got everything moved. This has kind of backfired on me because for some reason my monitor no longer likes the output resolution of the NVR.
I've been trying to fix this using the Hikvision web access and/or app, but the options are very limited compared to the NVR's native UI.

Anyway, if I understand this all correctly, first I need to make sure I can see all the cameras without the NVR (basically confirm they are powered and operational).
I should be able to do that by plugging a laptop into the POE switch downstairs.

Next I need to figure out how to factory reset the NVR so I can use my monitor with it. I'll have to look into that.
I need to reset it anyway to put a dummy config in it for the next homeowners.

Thanks everybody. If you have any other insights I'd appreciate it.
 
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Legolad said:
I can confirm that the external switch is a POE switch and is powering the cameras.
I can further confirm that the previous setup had the cameras attached directly to the NVR.
Click to expand...

What you suppose to use is an unmanaged POE switch to expand camera ports. That is why you are having issues.
 
TNguyen84 said:
From my experience, NVR has to be in bridge mode, which turns it into a switch. Then you can connect any switch/cam to it. I had to reset my NVR after putting it into bridge mode because it was doing some funky stuff. After that the IP cams was able to be picked up my the NVR.
Click to expand...

Bridge mode doesn't do anything but join the camera network to the ethernet network. The camera ports are an unmanaged switch.
 
Mike A. said:
He's not powering the switch/cams from the NVR. The NetGear is separately powered and supplying POE+ to the cams. That side is all good. The question is whether the NVR can see those on-network cams vs cams hanging off if its ports directly and/or how it needs to be set up to do that.
Click to expand...
As a commercial installer I will tell you:
The problem is: he is using a managed switch, which you should use an unmanaged switch and you can daisy chain two switches in tandem on each camera port.
If his diagram was showing cameras on the computer network side, all they would do is assign it a static address in that network and enter that static address in the NVR. Because an NVR can run cameras from both networks simultaneously.
 
tech_junkie said:
As a commercial installer I will tell you:
The problem is: he is using a managed switch, which you should use an unmanaged switch and you can daisy chain two switches in tandem on each camera port.
If his diagram was showing cameras on the computer network side, all they would do is assign it a static address in that network and enter that static address in the NVR. Because an NVR can run cameras from both networks simultaneously.
Click to expand...

Can’t you just allow DHCP even on a managed switch? That should turn it into a pass through device. I assume the NVR wants to be able to assign its own IPs on the network.
 
MTL4 said:
Can’t you just allow DHCP even on a managed switch? That should turn it into a pass through device. I assume the NVR wants to be able to assign its own IPs on the network.
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That managed switch can be configured to function like an un-managed switch and I would do that BUT...for the cameras I would NOT employ DHCP.

Instead, I would set up each camera with a unique, static IP in the same subnet as the NVR's LAN but outside of the router's DHCP pool. The NVR's LAN port would be connected to that same POE switch as would a LAN port from the router. Do not run any cameras through the router.
 
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TonyR said:
That managed switch can be configured to function like an un-managed switch and I would do that BUT...for the cameras I would NOT employ DHCP.

Instead, I would set up each camera with a unique, static IP in the same subnet as the NVR's LAN but outside of the router's DHCP pool. The NVR's LAN port would be connected to that same POE switch as would a LAN port from the router. Do not run any cameras through the router.
Click to expand...

Totally agree, I was thinking DHCP just for the switch not the cams.
 
MTL4 said:
Totally agree, I was thinking DHCP just for the switch not the cams.
Click to expand...
You could but if it were me, I'd assign NVR, cams and the managed switch unique static IP's all in the same subnet and outside of the router's DHCP pool....it's been a habit with me for some time now and it has served me well....thus far.:cool:
 
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