Having IP cameras on my main switch slow everything down?

eddie500

Gawd
Joined
Jan 23, 2003
Messages
984
I have 8 home IP cameras which are hooked to their own switches. These switches then get connected to my main switch. My NAS server which records the cameras is also connected to my main switch.

So the cameras in a way have to get routed through my main switch.

To simply everything I was thinking about getting a single 24 port gigabit switch that will connect all my cameras and computers.

Will doing this slow anything down, especially my connection to the internet which is hooked to a separate router. Seems like the single switch will have to take so many connections and maybe it is better to throw the cameras on their own switches?

What I don't know is how fast these new switches are to handle all these connections. What I am hoping for is that it will be actually better to keep everything on a single switch since I have to route the cameras through the main switch anyway to connect to the NAS.
 
Figure out how much bandwidth the cameras use. I doubt security cameras are saturating a gigabit connection.
 
It looks like around 4 or 5 Mbps bandwidth per camera. But I'm worried that with all these different ports sending data it will lag my connection to the internet.

But I assume this is a non-issue with switches.
 
Last edited:
It looks like around 4 or 5 Mbps bandwidth per camera. But I'm worried that with all these different ports sending data it will lag my connection to the internet.

But I assume this is a non-issue with switches.

Most switches I've seen list the switching capacity.
 
It depends. Are you talking about a cheap generic no-name switch or something that's halfway decent, or better yet, managed?

If you're using a true switch, it won't lag your connection to the internet so long as you're not streaming anything to the internet too. The switch will learn which network cards are connected to each individual ports and will route traffic between the source and destination MAC addresses in an IP packet, preventing packets from broadcasting on all the ports (so long as it's not being sent to a broadcast address. e.g.: 192.168.1.0).

If you want to get really granular you could get something that supports VLANs and completely segregate the camera traffic on it's own private subnet that isn't being routed to the subnet the cable modem is on. It really depends on how crazy and/or how paranoid you are about network security, but so long as you are using a decent gigabit switch I wouldn't worry about the switch being the weakest link in your network (and causing speed issues with your internet). I'd be more worried if your NAS server can keep up with all those cameras recording to it at the same time.
 
The switch will learn which network cards are connected to each individual ports and will route traffic between the source and destination MAC addresses in an IP packet, preventing packets from broadcasting on all the ports (so long as it's not being sent to a broadcast address. e.g.: 192.168.1.0).

If you want to get really granular you could get something that supports VLANs and completely segregate the camera traffic on it's own private subnet that isn't being routed to the subnet the cable modem is on. It really depends on how crazy and/or how paranoid you are about network security, but so long as you are using a decent gigabit switch I wouldn't worry about the switch being the weakest link in your network (and causing speed issues with your internet). I'd be more worried if your NAS server can keep up with all those cameras recording to it at the same time.

Three things. I agree with most of what you said, but there are a few things missing from the OP that would be helpful.

Eddie500, you said each camera is running at 4-5Mbps for each camera. Is that Mbps or MBps? That makes a very big difference. There are some awesome cameras out there and they could actually be running at 4-5MBps. I'm not going to assume. If it is MBps, then that would be around 40 Megabytes a second. Assuming the best case possible, that would be a little over 1/4 ( 40MBps) of the total port speed potential (125MBps). Thats also advertised total speed. In real world cases even with Cisco and Juniper gear, I could only get 90-110MBps speed in real world situations. Cisco 3750X and Juniper Ex4200 if anyone is wondering. If they are always recording, that is going to be an always constant load on the port where your NAS is.

Also going with separate VLANS is usually a good idea, it also depends on the L3 device you have on your backend. His might not even support VLANs (again, not going to assume). If you go with VLANs on a new 24-port switch, you might have to upgrade your router as well to support the VLANs.

Last bit ( personal bugging since I am a Network Engineer) , 192.168.1.0 is the Subnet/Network ID, not the broadcast address. If its the standard /24, the broadcast would be 192.168.1.255
 
You should be fine with 8 IP cameras. I do this for a living. Make sure you just set your system for H.264 - most will do MJPEG as a default and that will kill your bandwidth. Remember most cameras you use will only have a 10/100 port on them and even some, 10Mbps. Cameras don't use a LOT of bandwidth when using H.264

We typically put 20+ on a 24port PoE switch, granted we use 10/100/1000 because we want the uplink to our server... but yeah you'll be fine with 8. Just make sure you have enough PoE power coming out of that thing
 
If you buy a decent switch then it will have the switching capacity needed.
 
You will not slow that switch down at all with a few camera's. It'll switch 48 Gbps.
 
That switch only outputs 8.3w per PoE port... you'll want to verify the IP cameras you use do not use more then 8.3w or you'll have issues. You should always assume 15.4w per PoE port for any PoE switch you buy, this way you're covered for almost any kind of PoE device you need in the future.

Here is what I use. It's cheap but only has 8 ports of PoE, which I've already max'd out. But I have plenty of PoE power for my equipment.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704188

Don't go by what it says "30W per port" it's actually 15.5 per port (really 15.4) which is your standard.

Is it the best switch, no. But each port is Gigabit, so you'll get 7 PoE ports with it, plus your last is your uplink. MAY not be good for your install. For me, the price was great. When I add more cameras I'll add a 2nd switch.
 
Back
Top