Useful article - how to turn your Windows PC into a time server
Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 1:19 am
I've recently put my system online for the first time and as part of the I've VLAN'd all my cameras and set up a dual-NIC interface on my BI computer so my CCTV LAN is completely isolated from the web and my general LAN.
As I'm also doing Direct-to-Disc recording, this meant I had the issue of somehow needing to sync all my camera's time and date overlays to make a coherent and police-evidential standard system.
To do this, I used this article: https://www.interfacett.com/blogs/creat ... r-windows/ to set up the local NTP server on my PC, and pointed all my camera's to the PC (they were already for recording purposes, but I had to set this separately for NTP).
The result is each camera now is set to sync with the BI computer I have hourly, and the computer syncs it's own internal clock (which the local NTP server derives it's own time from) with the internet, but maintains that segregation between the CCTV LAN and the internet.
So it sort of works like this:
CCTV > SWITCH > VLAN1 > LAN NIC > PC (NTP) < WAN NIC < VLAN2 < SWITCH < WAN < time.windows.com
Perfect sync across all cameras without the exposure of the cameras to the internet!
As I'm also doing Direct-to-Disc recording, this meant I had the issue of somehow needing to sync all my camera's time and date overlays to make a coherent and police-evidential standard system.
To do this, I used this article: https://www.interfacett.com/blogs/creat ... r-windows/ to set up the local NTP server on my PC, and pointed all my camera's to the PC (they were already for recording purposes, but I had to set this separately for NTP).
The result is each camera now is set to sync with the BI computer I have hourly, and the computer syncs it's own internal clock (which the local NTP server derives it's own time from) with the internet, but maintains that segregation between the CCTV LAN and the internet.
So it sort of works like this:
CCTV > SWITCH > VLAN1 > LAN NIC > PC (NTP) < WAN NIC < VLAN2 < SWITCH < WAN < time.windows.com
Perfect sync across all cameras without the exposure of the cameras to the internet!