Help With POE Switch Placement

[ShawnInPaso]

I'm helping a friend install an IP camera system consisting of four outdoor cameras. The existing router is indoors, so I am going to make an interface box that will allow a cat5/6 connection to connect to the router from outside. I intended to use an 8 port POE switch for the externally mounted cameras. Here's where I could use some help by way of your experience and wisdom. Where should I mount the POE switch?

I can put it under the eaves directly above the cat5/6 junction box, or maybe to the rear of the house near the two cameras, then use a long run of cable to get to the front camera? Maybe I'm overlooking something, like another switch? What would you do?

The red triangles represent camera placement in my little sketch.

Thanks very much for any pointers.

Shawn

 

[sebastiantombs]

Best practice is to place the switch inside and home run each camera to the switch. The PC used for monitoring the cameras, or NVR, should also be plugged into that switch. Camera traffic should not be run through a router due to the low bandwidth capabilities of ISP provided routers. The switch can be plugged into the router to provide internet connectivity to the monitoring PC.

 

[ShawnInPaso]

Thanks for your kind reply @sebastiantoms .

Clearly I'm missing some fundamental aspects of the configuration as I can clearly see how the camera traffic could be a log jam for the router. Hence, the piece of the puzzle for me is this; if the switch can be plugged into the router to provide internet connectivity for monitoring the PC, wouldn't this also create high traffic on the router?

Much appreciated

 

[SouthernYankee]

NO local video traffic runs through the router.
1) the router is connected to a dumb switch
2) the PC is connected to the DUMB switch.
3) The NVR is connected to the dumb switch
4) The POE switch is connected to the DUMB switch
5) the cameras are connected to the POE switch.

 

[ShawnInPaso]

NO local video traffic runs through the router.
1) the router is connected to a dumb switch
2) the PC is connected to the DUMB switch.
3) The NVR is connected to the dumb switch
4) The POE switch is connected to the DUMB switch
5) the cameras are connected to the POE switch.

Thanks for the clarification. An NVR won;t be used, just BlueIris. Does this change things at all from your perspective?

 

[sebastiantombs]

That will work fine. All the camera traffic remains on the PoE switch and doesn't get to the router which is the goal. The other PC can use UI3 to monitor BI, or an RDP product, without over taxing the router.

 

[ShawnInPaso]

That will work fine. All the camera traffic remains on the PoE switch and doesn't get to the router which is the goal. The other PC can use UI3 to monitor BI, or an RDP product, without over taxing the router.

Thank you, sure appreciate the help.

 

[wittaj]

Something isn't right then.

Do not have the camera switch connected to the router.

Dual NIC the BI computer - one NIC is to bring the cameras into the BI computer on a different IP address range than the rest of the network. Then the second NIC is connected to your router.

See this diagram for dual NIC.

Available network topology options

I am currently setting up a camera system which will end up being approximately 12 cameras total (4 on the way now). I just set up my ubiquiti network with USG and 8 port poe switch, so I am able to create VLANs to make things secure, etc. I will need to get another larger switch and may deploy...

ipcamtalk.com

It might help to provide a network topology diagram showing your devices and IP addresses. You can list the private LAN IP addresses as it does not tell anyone anything - they are the same as everyone else. The IP address of your service provider for your WAN is what you don't provide...Everything on the inside past the modem is fine to put out. Everything on the inside, the local will fall under these ranges and you are not telling anyone anything about how to hack your system providing these ranges (basically any IP that starts out 10. or 172. or 192. are reserved for the "home side" of the service so every home internally will be within this same range):

10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255

 

[Flintstone61]

Optional,,,, You can skip a 2nd NIC if you use wifi to connect the BI pc to the router/Wan.
Thats my current set up.

 

[mikeynags]

Optional,,,, You can skip a 2nd NIC if you use wifi to connect the BI pc to the router/Wan.
Thats my current set up.

Are you using WiFi to connect to BI or is WiFi how BI connects to the rest of your network?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Flintstone61]

Everything is hardwired except i have no internet at the Rack.
so put a USB extension cord and a Tplink wifi adapter up agaist the wall and picked up xfinity wifi signal with the BI machine. So it has 2 - IP addresses, 192.168.1.100 ethernet/ and 172.something on the wifi adapter.