Ethernet Network

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quickstop
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:30 pm

Ethernet Network

Post by quickstop »

I am not the best on network config. I have 16 cameras recording 4MP and I believe I could saturate my 1GB network as my switches and router could be overrun with the streams. I am thinking I will need two BI clients and capture 8 cams on each with each on its own router. I don't believe 1 Windows 10 BI Client on 1 router will handle this. How stupid am I? Anybody?
Matts1984
Posts: 496
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:12 pm
Location: Maryland, USA

Re: Ethernet Network

Post by Matts1984 »

Well you're definitely not stupid. That said, the math does depend on your FPS as well and your chosen compression (H.264, H.265, etc). Lets assume you go with standard H.264 compression and a pretty decent 15 fps for each camera.... you'd be looking at about 90 Mb/s which is only a tenth of your maximum theoretical capacity. If you add in substreams to your BI instance (highly recommended for server CPU utilization) you'd probably add another 6-10 Mb/s.

All in all, you're totally fine running this through to a single BI system. You could easily tweak your FPS and compression to adjust as necessary (H.265 and 10 fps = roughly 35 Mb/s) but there is plenty of wiggle room to find what is best for you.

I can say though that your network configuration, both physical and logical, could be a consideration though. If possible you'd be best to avoid running this traffic through a router and keeping it only on switches. A router could certainly handle it but it is also designed to do other functions (route, probably NAT, DNS, etc) so keeping it's memory free could help you with normal operations. Switches on the other hand are optimized to pitch packets and since this is a very continuous stream, would be better for the job. This would mean your server could/should be on the same subnet as your cameras. Ask away and we can certainly provide other suggestions/recommendations in this area.

Also for reference, I didn't do this math in my head.... https://www.cctvcalculator.net/en/calcu ... alculator/ but it's definitely accurate.

EDIT :: Probably your bigger consideration for 16 cameras will be your CPU and storage requirements. Using the camera substreams will be huge for CPU and storage really just boils down to how long you want to keep recordings. Hopefully the community can correct me if I'm wrong but having two BI systems, even if both are yours at same location, will be two licenses.
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quickstop
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:30 pm

Re: Ethernet Network

Post by quickstop »

Awesome answer. Thank you for all the detail. I will build the LAN using only a switch, 1 BI with substreams, and 16 POE cams at 2K/20fps.
My offline storage will be 30TB to hold 30 days of data being a USB Disk Enclosure.
I plan to record daily onto the PC hard drive and at night, while the cams are on motion, I will move the data offline to the enclosure.

Sincerely appreciate your help. I am ordering hardware and needed some direction before I wasted a bunch of money ans still not had what I need.
Matts1984
Posts: 496
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:12 pm
Location: Maryland, USA

Re: Ethernet Network

Post by Matts1984 »

It sounds like you're pretty set.

Depending on the switch and server board you're using.... I'm guessing a 24 port POE switch? ... there could be another consideration. 16 ports for cameras + 2 for the server aggregated together (ie server gets 2Gb/s interface) + 1 or 2 for uplink = you'd still have 4ish interfaces left to play with. With a 2Gb/s interface you'd get failover capability (unlikely to need) but you'd have WAY more capacity than you could need. The switch should support line rate speed and cameras typically are only 100Mbps interfaces so there is tons of headroom.
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TimG
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Joined: Tue Jun 18, 2019 10:45 am
Location: Nottinghamshire, UK.

Re: Ethernet Network

Post by TimG »

Matts1984: You are spot on in regards needing two licences for running two copies of BI5.

If anybody does need a second licence, send a message to support and ask if they can give you any discount :idea:

Tim 2Licences :lol:
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quickstop
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:30 pm

Re: Ethernet Network

Post by quickstop »

Thank you for that tip!
Bernie228
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:26 pm

Re: Ethernet Network

Post by Bernie228 »

quickstop wrote: Tue Aug 11, 2020 4:03 pm I am not the best on network config. I have 16 cameras recording 4MP and I believe I could saturate my 1GB network as my switches and router could be overrun with the streams. I am thinking I will need two BI clients and capture 8 cams on each with each on its own router. I don't believe 1 Windows 10 BI Client on 1 router will handle this. How stupid am I? Anybody?
I was surprised to know that 1GB network can handle about 500 Mbps network traffic in the reality. So it worth to check the bandwidth using ip camera bandwidth calculators.
gbarnas
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2020 3:30 pm

Re: Ethernet Network

Post by gbarnas »

Keep in mind that the theoretical limits are just that.. a lot will depend on the ability of your switch to handle the load with multiple ports streaming. The switch in a typical router probably can't handle it, but a dedicated switch could. I have a Cisco enterprise switch for my cameras and I can't get the load lights to go above the first level with 8 cams - a mix of 1080 and 4K.
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