BI5 Slowing Network (Wifi only but only 1 wifi camera)

[btreinders]

I am having an issue with wifi performance when BI5 (latest version but I think it's been an issue since I upgraded to 5 from 4) is running. I only have one camera on wifi and 5 hard wired. This issue has persisted even though I changed that wifi camera to a totally different one and have tried 3 different router systems. First I had just a router and then I moved to Eero Pro and finally to Orbi. If I speed test on wifi with BI running it is consistently 100-200 Mbps slower than without BI running and every hour or two it will slow to a crawl (5-10Mbps and I'd even doubt it is that fast because all devices will really lose the internet for a minute or so). That wifi camera slows to around 1.5 fps when this happens as well. It seems to recover on it's own after 1-2 minutes or immediately if I shut down BI. The wifi camera is 4MP so that should only slow the wifi by maybe 2Mbps (at least that's what BI says it's bitrate streaming is). The wifi system can handle 400 Mbps over 2.4 and 866 over 5. Even happens when I disable that wifi camera so that is pointing to something else and not that camera. If I look at the amount of ethernet traffic in Windows it is usually around 50-60 MB/s which is a lot but the other 5 cameras are all 4MP or better and I am running them full resolution and full bitrates. I just don't understand how BI could affect the wifi network unless I was running a lot of wifi cameras and even with that one disabled it still is slower. The wifi router is connected directly to the internet provider router too. If I speedtest a hardwired PC (even the PC BI is installed on) when the wifi is crawling it shows full speed which is also very strange. I have a 500/500 internet connection and wifi tests around 400/400 without BI running and anywhere from 150 to 300 with it running. None of the hardwired devices (at least PCs since I can't speed test other devices) are affected. They always test 500/500 or very close to that. Any idea? Thanks!

 

[fenderman]

I am having an issue with wifi performance when BI5 (latest version but I think it's been an issue since I upgraded to 5 from 4) is running. I only have one camera on wifi and 5 hard wired. This issue has persisted even though I changed that wifi camera to a totally different one and have tried 3 different router systems. First I had just a router and then I moved to Eero Pro and finally to Orbi. If I speed test on wifi with BI running it is consistently 100-200 Mbps slower than without BI running and every hour or two it will slow to a crawl (5-10Mbps and I'd even doubt it is that fast because all devices will really lose the internet for a minute or so). That wifi camera slows to around 1.5 fps when this happens as well. It seems to recover on it's own after 1-2 minutes or immediately if I shut down BI. The wifi camera is 4MP so that should only slow the wifi by maybe 2Mbps (at least that's what BI says it's bitrate streaming is). The wifi system can handle 400 Mbps over 2.4 and 866 over 5. Even happens when I disable that wifi camera so that is pointing to something else and not that camera. If I look at the amount of ethernet traffic in Windows it is usually around 50-60 MB/s which is a lot but the other 5 cameras are all 4MP or better and I am running them full resolution and full bitrates. I just don't understand how BI could affect the wifi network unless I was running a lot of wifi cameras and even with that one disabled it still is slower. The wifi router is connected directly to the internet provider router too. If I speedtest a hardwired PC (even the PC BI is installed on) when the wifi is crawling it shows full speed which is also very strange. I have a 500/500 internet connection and wifi tests around 400/400 without BI running and anywhere from 150 to 300 with it running. None of the hardwired devices (at least PCs since I can't speed test other devices) are affected. They always test 500/500 or very close to that. Any idea? Thanks!

BI cannot affect your network performance. There is no difference between bi4 and bi5 in that respect. Since you state this issue occurs even when the wifi camera is disabled, the most likely reason is that your router cannot handle the traffic. You should have all your cameras and the BI machine plugged into the same switch or a switches attached to each other. No cameras or pc should be plugged into the router itself.

 

[mikeynags]

@btreinders I agree with @fenderman on his comments. I think you need to decouple the wifi issues from the Internet speedtest results.

I have some additional info/questions for you.

That wifi camera slows to around 1.5 fps when this happens as well.
(where are you seeing the 1.5fps? BI or the camera directly?)


The wifi camera is 4MP so that should only slow the wifi by maybe 2Mbps (at least that's what BI says it's bitrate streaming is).
(This makes no sense. Your bitrate for a 4MP camera running full bitrate should be occupying a larger footprint on your LAN, a min of 6-8 Mbps or more per camera.)

The wifi system can handle 400 Mbps over 2.4 and 866 over 5. Even happens when I disable that wifi camera so that is pointing to something else and not that camera.
(That Mbps rating is between the wifi device and the AP, that doesn't equate to 400Mbps or 866Mbps of Internet bandwidth on a speedtest. Also - speedtest should not be run from wifi - you won't get an accurate reading. Run it from a wired device. I have 1Gbps service and only see about 250-300 on wifi. That's normal.)

If I look at the amount of ethernet traffic in Windows it is usually around 50-60 MB/s which is a lot but the other 5 cameras are all 4MP or better and I am running them full resolution and full bitrates.
(I have 15 cams and average about 70-75 Mpbs on the BI PC. This is normal. If you work the math for your total FPS count based on the number of cameras that you have configured in BI. You can bring that number down if you back off the FPS settings on the cameras as well. Look at the wiki for info on optimizing BI)

I just don't understand how BI could affect the wifi network unless I was running a lot of wifi cameras and even with that one disabled it still is slower. The wifi router is connected directly to the internet provider router too. (Again, agree with @fenderman on this. This has nothing to do with wifi speed)

If I speedtest a hardwired PC (even the PC BI is installed on) when the wifi is crawling it shows full speed which is also very strange.
(If you run the Internet speedtest on the BI PC, shut BI down first to get an accurate reading. Also - make sure you try several different speedtest servers. One that I like is fast.com. It's owned by Netflix.)

 

[SouthernYankee]

Provide a detailed network diagram with the make, model number and ip address of all devices.

 

[btreinders]

BI cannot affect your network performance. There is no difference between bi4 and bi5 in that respect. Since you state this issue occurs even when the wifi camera is disabled, the most likely reason is that your router cannot handle the traffic. You should have all your cameras and the BI machine plugged into the same switch or a switches attached to each other. No cameras or pc should be plugged into the router itself.

When you say no camera or pc should be plugged into the router itself, I guess I don't understand. Why would it matter if the pc was plugged into the router directly or via a swtich? The router is basically a switch right? The switch the pc and cameras are plugged into has to have a connection to the router or they would not see the internet connection or the DHCP in the router. I will try spreading out the load of the cameras to multiple switches but they eventually all have to make it to BI from the same switch the pc BI is running on so I don't know how that helps but maybe it will. Thanks for the info! I'll report back if it helps.

@btreinders I agree with @fenderman on his comments. I think you need to decouple the wifi issues from the Internet speedtest results.

[I have some additional info/questions for you.]

[That wifi camera slows to around 1.5 fps when this happens as well.
(where are you seeing the 1.5fps? BI or the camera directly?)]

I see this in BI.

[The wifi camera is 4MP so that should only slow the wifi by maybe 2Mbps (at least that's what BI says it's bitrate streaming is).
(This makes no sense. Your bitrate for a 4MP camera running full bitrate should be occupying a larger footprint on your LAN, a min of 6-8 Mbps or more per camera.)]

I am just reporting what BI says it's bitrate is. See below. Actually this snapshot is showing much less for the wifi camera since I had it turned down in quality when I took it. It is the Back Porch camera and is the same as the Living Room camera but that is wired.

[The wifi system can handle 400 Mbps over 2.4 and 866 over 5. Even happens when I disable that wifi camera so that is pointing to something else and not that camera.
(That Mbps rating is between the wifi device and the AP, that doesn't equate to 400Mbps or 866Mbps of Internet bandwidth on a speedtest. Also - speedtest should not be run from wifi - you won't get an accurate reading. Run it from a wired device. I have 1Gbps service and only see about 250-300 on wifi. That's normal.)]

Sorry, just stating what the Orbi system can provide so on 5ghz it is faster than my service speed. I run the speedtest from wifi because that's where the issue is. Hardwired speedtests from the pc running BI always shows my provided speed no matter what even with BI running and even when it does it's 1-2 minute crawl. Same for any other hardwired pc. Wifi speed tests are consistent enough to tell if when BI is running it affects it. Without it running I get consistently get 400/400 without any other devices doing anything bandwidth intensive and when I fire up BI that speed drops to 150-300 immediately which is the issue.

[If I look at the amount of ethernet traffic in Windows it is usually around 50-60 MB/s which is a lot but the other 5 cameras are all 4MP or better and I am running them full resolution and full bitrates.
(I have 15 cams and average about 70-75 Mpbs on the BI PC. This is normal. If you work the math for your total FPS count based on the number of cameras that you have configured in BI. You can bring that number down if you back off the FPS settings on the cameras as well. Look at the wiki for info on optimizing BI)]

[I just don't understand how BI could affect the wifi network unless I was running a lot of wifi cameras and even with that one disabled it still is slower. The wifi router is connected directly to the internet provider router too. (Again, agree with @fenderman on this. This has nothing to do with wifi speed)]

But it sure points to something BI is doing on the network which might be a switch capacity issue like Fenderman says above. The Orbi wifi is in AP mode and connected to a LAN port on the service provider's router so it would have to be an issue with that router not being able to handle all the traffic but it is gigabit with four ports plus the WAN port.

]If I speedtest a hardwired PC (even the PC BI is installed on) when the wifi is crawling it shows full speed which is also very strange.
(If you run the Internet speedtest on the BI PC, shut BI down first to get an accurate reading. Also - make sure you try several different speedtest servers. One that I like is fast.com. It's owned by Netflix.)

Speedtest.net and speedof.me are the two I use and they seem consistent enough to show the issue. I will try fast.com to see if it matches. Thanks for all the help!

 

[fenderman]

When you say no camera or pc should be plugged into the router itself, I guess I don't understand. Why would it matter if the pc was plugged into the router directly or via a swtich? The router is basically a switch right? The switch the pc and cameras are plugged into has to have a connection to the router or they would not see the internet connection or the DHCP in the router. I will try spreading out the load of the cameras to multiple switches but they eventually all have to make it to BI from the same switch the pc BI is running on so I don't know how that helps but maybe it will. Thanks for the info! I'll report back if it helps.



Speedtest.net and speedof.me are the two I use and they seem consistent enough to show the issue. I will try fast.com to see if it matches. Thanks for all the help!

View attachment 58275

The router is not basically a switch. This is a common issue. When setup as instructed no traffic passes the router. Your bitrates are extremely high and your router is choking on the traffic. Assuming your switches are gigabit, you dont have to spread the load between switches, just avoid the router.

 

[btreinders]

@fenderman Should the Orbi system be plugged into the router? Should I only plug one switch into the router and then plug all other switches, Orbi, PC and cameras and such to that switch? I guess by connecting all four ports on the router I thought I was spreading out the traffic to the internet that way.

 

[jmhmcse]

So many questions, not enough details on your network's or camera's configurations... a few thoughts that may or may not be applicable to your installation...

Orbis are typically installed to provide a mesh wireless network and/or wired connections into a mesh network; their advantage is hardwiring of locale is not necessary. However, this does not provide an optimum network. The more times you jump wirelessly between Orbis the slower the wireless node becomes.

recommendation: hardwire all orbi nodes.​

Orbis are also sometimes simply connected to an existing network without any configuration. One Orbi is typically hardwired into the network and additional Orbis are added to remote locations. If not configured, rather than connected, to a network you'll have a double nat installation which will create havoc if the same SSID is applied to the original network's wireless and orbi wireless.

recommendation: configure Orbi(s) into existing network's address range​

When installing devices which generate lots of network traffic (e.g. cameras) an external switch and not the modem/router itself should handle all local traffic.

recommendation: buy a multi-port/POE/Gb switch; 16, 24, or higher. minimally, connect all cameras and Blue Iris (BI) computer to the external switch, connect switch to router. optimally, connection everything to switch; cameras, Orbi(s), desktop, laptop, BI computer, etc .​

one single larger (e.g. 24 port) switch is normally better than multiple switches; there are exceptions. you have only one link (WAN port) to the internet, the four ports on the router all share the same aggregation of LAN network to that one WAN port; how/where you connect devices to these ports doesn't matter. installing an actual switch will isolate the router from network traffic which is between local nodes. only the traffic which needs to go to the internet will pass through to the router and the WAN port.

in addition to a network diagram (connections, speeds, addresses wired/wireless, etc) also the configurations for the cameras (constant/variable, fps, max/average bitrates, quality, encoding) Typically 10 or 12 frames per second is adequate. FPS and other settings have a major impact on the network traffic generated.

recommendation: change to a lower FPS. Possibly change to a lower Max/Average bitrate. Other changes may lower network usage and still maintain an acceptable image.​

The more detailed information provided, the more accurate/pertinent responses (suggestions/recommendations) the forum can provide.

 

[Nanookofthenorth]

When you say no camera or pc should be plugged into the router itself, I guess I don't understand. Why would it matter if the pc was plugged into the router directly or via a swtich? The router is basically a switch right? The switch the pc and cameras are plugged into has to have a connection to the router or they would not see the internet connection or the DHCP in the router. I will try spreading out the load of the cameras to multiple switches but they eventually all have to make it to BI from the same switch the pc BI is running on so I don't know how that helps but maybe it will. Thanks for the info! I'll report back if it helps.



Speedtest.net and speedof.me are the two I use and they seem consistent enough to show the issue. I will try fast.com to see if it matches. Thanks for all the help!

View attachment 58275

Flag Up Detector? I'm curious . . . please tell more.

 

[SouthernYankee]

On my system
1) The modem is plugged into the ASUS router
2) The ASUS router supports wifi on channel 1 (sid FPXHOME)
3) the router is plugged into a 16 port netgear switch
4) the BI PC is plugged into the 16 port netgear switch. (NIC 1)
5) The BI PC has 2 NICs each one on a different sub net.
6) The BI NIC 2 is plugged into a 8 port netgear switch.
7) The 8 port netgear switch is plugged into multiple POE switches
8) The 8 port netgear switch is plugged into a 2.4 GHZ access point on channel 11 (sid CAMHOME)

All cameras traffic is not on the home network.
All cameras do not have access to the internet
All local traffic does not pass through the router except of local wifi
The CAMHOME wifi network is currently not in use, it is used for testing and setting up cameras before running wire.

 

[sebastiantombs]

The common router also has limited bandwidth on it's switch ports, especially compared to a "real" switch. You could easily be overloading your routers bandwidth capacity.

 

[btreinders]

Flag Up Detector? I'm curious . . . please tell more.

I duplicated the Driveway camera (so two BI cams coming from the same physical camera) so that I could use a different mask set up and not record anything either. When the Flag Up detector detects a certain amount of triggers within a time frame it sends out a command to my ISY-994i home automation hub and then the ISY changes the Driveway camera to a Flag Up profile which has the flag area masked out so it isn't continually recording the flag blowing in the wind if that makes sense. The only thing I am uncertain about is that doubling the traffic from that camera? I don't think it is though since it shows 0 kB/s from one of the two cameras.

For my original issue, big thanks to everyone else here! I had a Gigabit Ethernet card in the machine so I moved the cameras (except the one on wifi) to a separate network on the Ethernet card. This offloads all that camera traffic from the rest of the LAN and seems to be working so far. I never really could get it working that well by moving them off the router itself but this setup is working so far. I think I was overloading the POE switch as well since all the traffic from the BI PC was also running through it and now it's just the cameras. Wifi speeds only go down a small amount when BI is running due to that one Wifi camera.

 

[bp2008]

You are correct, duplicated cameras share the original video stream so they do not add to bandwidth usage. They also do not add very much CPU usage.