Effect of security cameras on LAN

[slowly]

Hoping I can get a little help here. I am considering replacing my wired security NVR with a POE NVR and some high bandwidth cameras. My concern is the cameras recording all the time may slow my network down?

I wasn't sure if I could separate the cameras with a Vlan as here - https://www.snbforums.com/threads/h...-386-or-388-code-no-scripting-required.85850/ or just stick a switch in between the NVR and cameras and the traffic won't disturb much else. I am open to all ideas, just have no idea how to keep these devices from slowing other things down. You can tell I actually have no idea how my network actually operates!

I have an Asus RT AX89X ( bought in a rush after a breakdown of my RT AC88U. Managed to buy the only non Merlin supported Asus!). The AC88U was bought after advice here.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[tgl]

VLANs won't help you here, in fact they add (a tiny amount of) network overhead. If you can plug all the cameras and the NVR into the same switch, that would work to keep the traffic off the rest of your network.

There's a separate discussion to be had about whether you want to isolate the camera traffic for security reasons. If you do, VLANs can help with that. But they won't help with bandwidth concerns.

I suspect you're overthinking this: security cams don't normally consume a lot of bandwidth. But if you want to spring for an extra switch, go for it.

 

[slowly]

TGL, Thanks! You are right I am overthinking it. I was going to move up to some 8mp cameras for better ID and was reading at 30fps they could use up to 16mbps. So I was worried 5 or 6 (at the most) potentially means 100mbps spinning around my network as a baseload. If the switch keeps that from the rest of the network it seems a modest cost. Thank you

 

[Tech9]

Cameras network must be isolates from your internal network. Otherwise you'll potentially provide 5-6 wired connections to your internal network accessible from outside.

 

[slowly]

Thanks Tech9. Do you mean by a subnet or similar?

 

[Tech9]

Most NVRs create isolated camera network from control network by default. The cameras traffic doesn’t go through main network at all. Check your user manual. Your NVR may have PoE ports already as well.

 

[sfx2000]

I am considering replacing my wired security NVR with a POE NVR and some high bandwidth cameras. My concern is the cameras recording all the time may slow my network down?

If you have wired cameras over coax to a dedicated NVR - keep with what you have.

Moving to WiFi has little value add for the cameras - everything from additional Wifi traffic to the fact that WiFi can be jammed fairly easily...

It's been a recent trend that burglars will do broadband jamming in the 2.4Ghz band to disable all the sensors, not just WiFi, but anything else that runs in that band..

 

[Tech9]

@slowly is planning wired cameras, not wireless.

 

[slowly]

Definitely was planning wired POE cameras, presently have wired over coax. The reason was a wider choice of cameras these days for POE than conventional.

 

[tiddlywink]

PoE NVR = no traffic touches your network as all cables are directly wired into the NVR.

For a more advanced setup and what I recommend, you would use a non-PoE NVR or NAS + PoE switch. Still, the traffic would reside on that switch. Only the uplink and only when accessed would pass traffic to your main switch/router.

As someone who had airgapped ip cameras for over a decade, splurge on a vlan aware router, managed switch, and managed poe switch.

 

[slowly]

Thanks tiddlywink, that makes sense from a security viewpoint

 

[sfx2000]

@slowly is planning wired cameras, not wireless.

Yeah, my point was, resist the lure of wireless security camera - they're easy to install, but as I mentioned, there are risks associated with that...

The bad guys have caught on, and it's trivial to do a broadband noise blast in the 900MHz and 2.4GHz bands to knock sensors and other devices offline long enough for them to get in and get out before systems can recover...