The customer has a Wi-Fi network installed by the cable company. Long story short, there is nowhere for us to plug into. No switch, router etc. We have to use the Wi-Fi.
What can I use that will connect to the Wi-Fi, and we can plug the NVR into?
NVR is a Dahua 16 channel FWIW
Plug the nvr into an omnidirectional access point
I would use a UBNT airmax radio either 2.4 or 5 depending what the customers WiFi is.
I would as well.
The NanoStationM5 or NanostationM2 model contains both an Ethernet 10/100 Ethernet port for the NVR and the AP power and a spare second 10/100 port you can use if needed. The code is stable and rarely needs a reboot. (the smaller "loco" version has only 1 port, but is smaller)
You do have to live with 10/100 with these models, but for a wireless link that might be acceptable. There is not a similar AC version with GigE released as yet.
There are quite a few Access Points available that can run in client/bridge mode and good models of those should work fine as well.
These rarely need to be touched for months/years at a time in my experience. Not fancy or AC, but if 801.11n WiFi is enough radio bandwidth then they are reliable.
I don't get the cable company not offering a switched Ethernet... Around here, the first thing the Cable, ILEC, other ISP types want customers to do is to plug into the Ethernet port and test the link and NOT use the WiFi...
Would the new Gen2s work? We have some of them here. We could get a loco if need be
How would we set it up? We always use them as P2P.
Thanks
They should as far as I know, but I have not personally tested the Gen2 for this application.
This cable company has done more to secure a dahua product than the company themselves have done in the last 5 year.
That is funny UD2.I will give you that.
CHarter put in cable TV and Wi-FI for 50 apartment units and the leasing office. Each unit has this box with equipment in it.
In the office we plugged into a switch in the box and got a 10. something IP. I went to the clients laptop and he had a 192.xx address. We called Charter, gave them the MAC of the device I got the 10. from and they could not find it, nor the MAC of anything else in the box. They then told me the IP address for the office was a different 192 address than what I pulled from the laptop.
The 3rd IP turned out to be from the old leasing office in one of the units before rehab.
Charter could not tell me how I could physically plug into a device to get our equipment on the same network as the manager. Or why I got a different IP address than the manager.
So I figure the easiest thing is just put the NVR on the Wi-Fi network.
I don't think I need an AP, as Iam not trying to log into the NVR. I need the NVR to be logged into the clients Wi-FI.
We use these all the time for such purpose.
Well worth the $29.00 I paid for mine.
I use it for demonstrations when the installer only has guest WiFi at the business.
These ones from TP-Link also work well for short indoor applications, and you can power it from the USB port on the NVR.
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704245CVF&cm_re=tp-link-_-33-704-245CVF-_-Product
Didn't mean to be a smart alec at the expense of your issue.
Most wireless access points that I have seen do have a "bridging" mode that may be what you are looking for. You would configure the WAP to connect to the WiFi network in question and then use the Ethernet ports on the WAP as hard point connections. You may need to dig into the manuals of course, but I've seen this on several lower cost units.
In the office we plugged into a switch in the box and got a 10. something IP. I went to the clients laptop and he had a 192.xx address. We called Charter, gave them the MAC of the device I got the 10. from and they could not find it, nor the MAC of anything else in the box. They then told me the IP address for the office was a different 192 address than what I pulled from the laptop.
Have you tried 'hairpinning' a connection from the laptops wifi connection using the public facing IP address?
Sean has the simple answer.
The way it works requires a laptop and the NVR to be in DHCP mode.
Turn off WiFi on the laptop if built in.
Plug TPLINK into laptop network jack
Log in to TPLINK using browser
Scan for available Network and log in like you would as a user. Once complete and you can browse the internet, Unplug the laptop and plug in the NVR/DVR.
Sometimes you have to power cycle the NVR/DVR for the DHCP to really take. Use the NTP Manual Test feature to verify complete internet access.
At least, that’s been my experience. I have a unit connnected as a demo in a distributor site this way that only allows WiFi guest access.
Sean has the simple answer.
But (no offense to Sean), is it the best way to solve the underlying issue?
Does anyone really like the idea of sending all the NVRs outbound client traffic over a wireless connection, esp. when there is a wired jack on the cable box/router that should be able to do the trick?
Not to mention the fact that when any clients are connected in the office, their traffic will be twice transmitted wirelessly (once by the bridge and once by the AP) eating up channel/bandwidth space.
I agree completely it is not a good idea, but telling the OP to go argue with the cable company to provide a physical Ethernet port instead of wireless seems unproductive. I would assume that he has already tried that route.
I am assuming the camera streams are not on the wireless and are hardwired to the NVR.
Before the clients are attached via wireless I would hook up a client hardwired to the NVR and measure the actual bandwidth being consumed over the network. If it uses more than ~25% of the wireless connection measured capacity (not the reported value), then this might not even work long term...
Fiber when you can chose it,
Copper when you can't.
Wireless only when there really is no other choice.
There are a lot of other questions about how this network is implemented given how little the cable company seems to know about it's details and seems to be able to support.
Normally I would say don't do it, but that was not his question as I understood it.
I am way too wordy anyway. I have found that sometimes when people ask for the time they just want the time, so telling them how to build a watch is not always helpful or desired.
to go argue with the cable company to provide a physical Ethernet port instead of wireless seems unproductive. I would assume that he has already tried that route.
Well, he already has a "physical" Ethernet port, (I'm assuming it is just a configuration issue).
As explained in this follow-up post.
True enough, but the way I read that post, Charter was not able to deliver/decipher a working Ethernet in the same VLAN/Subnet as the Manager office workstation(s)...
It could be Charter's setup is that bad that they cannot support their stuff.
Or maybe that Charter box and switch inside are private devices and behind the client facing network so they are not usable by the clients/customers.
In any case I never got that there was a working Ethernet interface that provided what he needed, or there would not have been a post...
Maybe I missed something though...
Or maybe that Charter box and switch inside are private devices and behind the client facing network so they are not usable by the clients/customers.
According to a Jay, Charter didn't say it wasn't supported per se, just that they couldn't tell him how to do it.
I'm not sure Jay wants to deal with it, but if it were me I might try to get a definitive answer on the question. Or find the manual online. I wouldn't want to be the guy who puts in a wifi bridge just to have somebody 6 months down the line say "you just need to enable x and y"...
I would too.
I would completely expect the provider (Charter) should be able to hand a customer a working Ethernet port(s). If not over the phone then they send out a tech who works through the Charter internal issues until they can hand the customer working network ports...
That its how I would approach it anyway. While we could work through the various technical issues for/with Charter, it seems like they should be held responsible for that piece.
It is their network after all...
On a related note...
I think the view as a independent contractor muddles this somewhat. I have spent MANY hours over the years fixing problems that were not mine to fix to provide a better end result for the customer.
So much so at times that it put a really serious dent in the margin left for that installation. On smaller jobs the labor alone for these sorts of fixes can push it into the negative range. You can't do that forever...
It can be a difficult call as to which battle to fight. Choose your battles they say...
Last week I spent ~3 hours troubleshooting a camera system issue that turned out to be one flakey ISP wireless radio for the 2.4GHz band.
No real way to charge enough to cover the call that customer since it was "almost working" before I got there and it wasn't my installation anyway.
The ISP would not have found/fixed it unless they just swapped everything for good measure. They do not have the experience or the proper tools to diagnose that sort of radio issue that I have seen.
So for Jay at what point does he just punt and get on down the road? Fix the customer with what works for them and move along. I typically don't do that, but your time is not free and you do not want to always be the bad guy for the customer...
Two weeks ago another site had 4 broken 6MHz channels in their Cable HFC Internet feed (and still does). 5 different tickets were opened with the cable ISP over a period of a month to resolve the issue. Each time, the metric for the ISP is "were you able to close the ticket?". Never was the metric "did you really solve the problem?"...
The problem is still there today. When a cable modem uses 4 channels the link is crap. When it is updated to an 8 channel modem, only 1/2 the channels suffer so the link mostly works, but not well some of the time. When finally a newer 16-channel modem is used and it hides the sins in the bad 4 channels well enough that even though the error counter climb through the roof, that particular site can meet its contracted data rate.
Now the cable company is not going to fix their obvious cable plant problem. For them providing newer modem to replace the previous one "solves" the problem for that ticket...
The other customers in the area will never know why the data is unreliable and has issues. The cable company clearly will not fix it (effect is on around ~400-500 customers) as evidenced by all the closed tickets. The 5th ticket was just to get them to fix the root cause since they never verified with the one opening the tickets that the problem was resolved for ANY ticket.
Makes me nearly crazy some days fixing other peoples problems or getting them to fix their own, so the rest of us don't have to do goofy things to work around their issues...
Are we talking about the management company wanting to stream 16 4K channels to a remote site or what I understood which is an apartment tenant wanting to remote view his 16 channel system?
I believe in this case, he is talking about the leasing office setup only, though I may be misunderstanding. If it is the leasing office, it could be many clients.
Those are both good points.
Most of the time today "speeds and feeds" don't seem to concern folks.
When network bandwidth was at a premium, you had to pay close attention to it all. Now with dedicated GigE per device, most of the skills to tune such things are becoming more rare as they are less necessary.
Today many folks are certainly as capable, if not more so, than in the past, but it only matters sometimes, instead of every time like it used to...
I made quite a few assumptions or at least base-line understanding based on the description given. (that maybe I shouldn't have). One was that the client in the management office where they just had a X by Y matrix of video displays that was scaled (generally anyway) by the NVR to fit the resolution of the final display resolution and the bandwidth was reasonable (<20Mbps was a rough guess). I haven't tested these NVR units being discussed, so I don't have a good feel for what would be considered "normal" on a per stream/camera basis...
Normally for a question like this my answer would be a list of more questions.
Running with the client equivalent of Windows Perfmon/TaskMgr where the CPU and network traffic is displayed all the time during setup and testing is my recommendation. That will help you catch several (oopses and some Ouches...) by just keeping an eye on the CPU/Memory/Network and disk traffic on the clients/NVR...
To be more clear about what we are talking about.
The AP here is really just used to convert from the Ethernet port which the NVR does have, to WiFi which it apparently does not have.
It is actually working like a bridge to connect it's Ethernet port to the WiFi network, by joining the WiFi network as a client. It is not acting as an AP in the normal sense...
They are inexpensive and reliable and unlike most higher end AP, do not need a cloud connection or an Access-Point manager application. You can just HTTP into it to set up the SSID/password of the apartment WiFi...
So just like setting up any Nanobeam in Station mode? Scan for the Wifi SSID and put the name and password in?
That simple?
Pretty much. There are a couple of settings like enable transparent bridging that might need to be changed, but generally it is super simple if you don't care about much more than basic connectivity.
Locking to a MAC or channel/Frequency is not needed what you are just the client from another AP. The AP determines the settings and you just need the SSID and password.
Once you have the bridge in house, just test it on another WiFi in the office and you will see how straightforward it is.
These older Ubiquiti units also have a spectrum analyzer of sorts built in, but unlike the newer models it can't function while the bridge is doing anything else. The newer AC bridges and such can see the spectrum while functioning as a bridge/AP/client/etc...
You do need to know what bands are the least polluted/crowded and what band is being provided by the cable company. These bridges are single band only 2.4 or 5GHz so you need to pick in advance. They are generally $60-$100 or so depending on model and source.
There is a very easy to use mount from Ubiquiti and other suppliers that makes them super fast/easy to mount if you are mounting it indoors their odd shape (designed for outdoor pole mounts) is challenging to mount at times otherwise. I have made my own for less $, but theirs is easy to mount and well designed.
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