Subscriber Discussion

Gigabit Ethernet Connections On IP Cameras?

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Jun 02, 2016

Are there any network cameras, in the security/surveillance market, that offer a 10/100/1000 Ethernet connection or are all 10/100? My question also leads to another one.

What good is a 10/100/1000 port on the POE switch if the camera is 10/100?

U
Undisclosed #2
Jun 02, 2016
IPVMU Certified

What good is a 10/100/1000 port on the POE switch if the camera is 10/100?

What good is a 10/100/1000 port on the camera if the stream is < 90Mbps?

Avatar
John Scanlan
Jun 02, 2016
IPVM • IPVMU Certified

The switch may be used in other applications e.g. connecting access points, or other devices with gig NICs.

Avatar
Brian Karas
Jun 02, 2016
IPVM

What good is a 10/100/1000 port on the POE switch if the camera is 10/100?

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JH
John Honovich
Jun 02, 2016
IPVM

The Axis P1428-E does, see excerpt of data sheet:

There certainly may be others. I've never done a thorough search for this as generally Gig is not needed for IP cameras (e.g., even the Avigilon 7K / 30MP camera uses 100Mb/s only).

Related, there is such a thing called Industrial GigE cameras, different space than video surveillance.

U
Undisclosed #2
Jun 02, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Related, there is such a thing called Industrial GigE cameras, different space than video surveillance.

Just to add, GigE cameras typically support uncompressed raw output, hence the need for 10x bandwidth.

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EP
Eddie Perry
Jun 02, 2016

well the most i have ever had one camera was 120Mbs

but then again the camera was also functioning as a multi view web server as well with 4 other cameras streams mounted to the camera

but it was also a $1500 camera with special firmware

guess if you had money to throw at a custom job the cameras hardware would be able to handle it?

U
Undisclosed #2
Jun 02, 2016
IPVMU Certified

So it had a Gigabit Ethernet port?

EP
Eddie Perry
Jun 02, 2016

yes it did

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #3
Jun 02, 2016

"What good is a 10/100/1000 port on the POE switch if the camera is 10/100?"

POE switches aren't just built for cameras. one would benefit from using a POE powered Gig Port when Connecting to a POE powered AP.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #4
Jun 02, 2016

Gigabit sometimes brings unneeded complexity when dealing with PoE, as PoE via Injection, or Mode B uses the unused pairs. Gig uses all pairs, so there are no unused pairs. If you had a gig switch and a standard injector, it wouldn't work.

Now there are gigabit and 802.3at compatible injectors, but be aware for older equipment.

I was recently looking for an industrial PoE switch with gig copper uplinks and 10/100 PoE ports. Very hard to find. Most had gig on all, or were 10/100 on all.

U
Undisclosed #2
Jun 02, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Gig uses all pairs, so there are no unused pairs. If you had a gig switch and a standard injector, it wouldn't work.

Not sure what you mean, as I do this all the time.

Surveillance cameras, with very few exceptions (the p1428-e and Eddie's classified SuperCam), have 100Mb interfaces, so they naturally are using only 1236; and since the injector injects on 4578, everything works fine.

Are you not talking about cameras?

EP
Eddie Perry
Jun 03, 2016

haha no not classified but I did sign a NDA for certain parts of the development work on it.

what I can say is it involved using the cameras and the built in storage of an entire system (say 64 cameras) with each camera's storage linked to each other to form a saleable/expandable cloud or local cloud system.

it was a neat idea just not enough backing into it. to many china cams flooding the market to make it worth while for investors.

MI
Matt Ion
Jun 04, 2016

Gig uses all pairs, so there are no unused pairs. If you had a gig switch and a standard injector, it wouldn't work.

Only if your cameras are using GbE as well. FE camera, port falls back to FE spec, mode B injector works fine.

HB
Harris Bond
Jun 03, 2016

I thought the answer was obvious on this but it has not been mentioned so maybe I am wrong:

A single 2-5MP camera might only need 2-10Mbps but let's say you have 20 cameras that each needs 6Mbps so the system needs 120Mbps. So the port from the switch to the NVR/VMS has to be gigabit and hence you will need a full gigabit switch (since not many switches have only 1 gigabit port and the rest are only ethernet).

Or am I missing something?

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #3
Jun 03, 2016

Harris,

That's not the case.

Although it can be used for the backhaul, there "are" plenty of switches that have 2-4 ports that are Gig ports and the rest that are 10/100.

These switches are built to fit many applications. So any High Bandwidth POE powered device. ex. Wireless APs.

(using all four pairs on Alternative A POE)

HB
Harris Bond
Jun 03, 2016

Undisclosed 3,

I do not disagree and I knew someone would post that there are switches with a few gigabit ports and the rest are 10/100. Before posting though I had a very brief look at the Cisco 110 and 200 series and all 10/100 switches did not include a gigabit port. Some of course include GBIC ports which can be "converted" to gigabit and used for the backhaul.

Anyway my point was that sometimes you do need at least 1 gigabit port on the switch.

Can you please explain more on the below, not sure I understood what you meant and I am always curious to learn new things:

These switches are built to fit many applications. So any High Bandwidth POE powered device. ex. Wireless APs.(using all four pairs on Alternative A POE)

MI
Matt Ion
Jun 04, 2016

Try the SGxxx series instead of SFxxx models.

U
Undisclosed #2
Jun 04, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Some of course include GBIC ports which can be "converted" to gigabit and used for the backhaul.

No conversion is necessary when using the 200-series combo ports for GigE. They "convert" to something else only when you plug-in a GBIC.

The SF200-FP provides sufficient bandwidth for typical surviellience configurations, and can run at full speed on all ports at the same time.

U
Undisclosed #5
Jun 03, 2016

Most all IP cameras will never come close to 100 Mbps so a gigabit port isn't needed for the port that the camera is plugged into. The max we set our cameras to is 4 Mbps.

However, IMO, the switch should always have atleast 2 Gigabit uplink ports. One that is connected to the NVR and the other that is connected to the router. The reason those should be gigabit rated is because it takes all the combined traffic from all IP cameras and sends them through one port, and in this case, all the combined traffic could be more than 100 Mbps.

For small 4 channel systems, and probably even an 8 channel system, gigabit uplink ports probably arent needed, but its good to have them anyways.

Avatar
Jon Dillabaugh
Jun 05, 2016
Pro Focus LLC

Do you have Gig WAN? Super jealous!

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #3
Jun 05, 2016

Sure! 801.11ac MIMO.

Nothing new.

And that's per client. But the benefit of a Gig port for an AP is also so that multiple clients can connect using high bandwidth at the same time.

Avatar
Jon Dillabaugh
Jun 05, 2016
Pro Focus LLC

WAN is not WLAN??

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U
Undisclosed #5
Jun 05, 2016

Not yet unfortunately, but this connection is mainly used for the local devices that are connected to same router who will be requesting packets from the surveillance system.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #8
Mar 06, 2020

I have gig up and down in my house. In reality I ONLY get about 900/900.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #7
Mar 05, 2020

The switch should always have at least 2 Gigabit uplink ports. One that is connected to the NVR and the other that is connected to the router.

Will this setup have less lag than just connecting the NVR and the Poe switch directly to the router?

Thank you.

U
Undisclosed #2
Jun 03, 2016
IPVMU Certified

However, IMO, the switch should always have atleast 2 Gigabit uplink ports. One that is connected to the NVR and the other that is connected to the router.

Why one connected to the router? Assuming a POE NVR, isn't it just as fast and twice as safe to connect the router to the LAN side of the NVR?

U
Undisclosed #5
Jun 05, 2016

Absolutely, assuming its a POE NVR you wont really need a seperate switch at all. Also, most all of what I have seen on POE NVR's, the main Lan connections on the NVR's are gigabit rated.

MI
Matt Ion
Jun 04, 2016

Okay, one thing nobody's mentioned yet is that all-gigabit switches tend to have a much stronger backplane (aka "fabric", aka switching capacity) than their 10/100 cousins.

Example:

  • Cisco SF300-24P (24 10/100 802.11af ports, four GbE ports, two mini-GBIC slots) lists at 12.8Gbps switching capacity.
  • Cisco SG300-28P (24 GbE 802.11af ports, four non-powered GbE ports, two mini-GBIC slots) lists 56Gbps.

If you're stacking a lot of high-traffic cameras and maybe running your NVR to iSCSI storage, you're going to come a lot closer to the maximum of what the FE switch can handle. Might never hit it, but personally, I'd rather have all that headroom.

From our usual local retailer, it's about a 50% premium for the SG model ($780, vs $530 for the SF version).

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U
Undisclosed #2
Jun 04, 2016
IPVMU Certified

If you're stacking a lot of high-traffic cameras and maybe running your NVR to iSCSI storage, you're going to come a lot closer to the maximum of what the FE switch can handle. Might never hit it, but personally, I'd rather have all that headroom.

Most switches are non-blocking these days, meaning that they provide full line rate switching capability for all ports, full-duplex at the same time.

These switches are a good example, here's the FE model:

24 x 100 Mbps = 2.4 Gbps x 2 (full duplex) = 4.8 Gbps

4 x 1000 Gbps = 4 Gbps x 2 (full duplex) = 8.0 Gbps

Total 12.8 Gbps, exactly the spec.

As for headroom, one nice thing about camera networks is that it's basically a one way street, so you always have 2.4 Gbps headroom, or half the camera bandwidth back.

RD
Rob Dunham
Oct 29, 2019
Tailored IT Solutions

This is an old conversation, but I thought I'd add something that hasn't been discussed: Total Switching Capacity. This is the amount of bandwidth that the switch can process through all of its ports simultaneously. Most budget-friendly switches (especially those marketed to the camera world) do not provide enough total switching capacity to run all ports at maximum throughput simultaneously. Unlike connecting other devices such as computers, cameras are streaming at full blast the whole time they are connected. Since your average camera will max out a 10/100 port pretty readily, you need a switch capable of handling that capacity across as many ports as you have connected at any given time. If you plan on using 4 or 5 ports on an 8 port 10/100 switch, you won't have much issue. If you plan on using 7 or 8 ports on the same switch, you will have serious performance issues. Simply swapping out for a gigabit switch will solve the problem. Even though your cameras will still connect at 10/100, the extra switching capacity on the switch will make all the difference.

UE
Undisclosed End User #6
Oct 29, 2019

Hanwha PNM-9081VQ have Gigabit interface

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