hardwired

Hmmm, I had to Google HBCI to figure out what it even was, which appears to be something associated with home banking...I'm guessing that Wireshark identified it as such because of the port number it uses (completely non-standard, BTW), rather than the actual data in the packet. You might try the software packaged with the camera with a Wireshark session, and see if it pulls a different data stream type from the camera. Also, you might try VLC Media Player to test opening RTP/RTSP streams to the camera (with that port number and IP address), it'll be quicker than testing different settings with Milestone. After a while, you may be reaching a point of deciding how much your time is worth to you, rather than getting a camera that is supported by your NVR software. I do enjoy these types of challenges, but sometimes it's just not worth it.

Still a lot of questions here: are you using a VMS program that has multicasting for live viewing, or is all of your viewing traffic running through the servers? I would be inclined to think that the pixellation you described in your other system was more likely due to the server disk system hitting it's throughput limits, which are most likely much lower than the switch limits. Unless you are daisy-chaining the fiber ports from multiple switches through each other, the throughput of each edge switch in your plan has cameras running at 1Mbps, so even a 48 port switch would only be 48Mbps, plus viewing traffic, if on the same switches (a system that size should have at least VLANS separating viewing and camera traffic, if not separate switches for each)-overall, not a big load on each switch. Where the load starts coming in is at the core switches where multiple edge switches connect to multiple servers, there you may want higher performance (although you will not likely need PoE capability there).

In a quick look, the biggest difference seems to be that the 2910 supports high power PoE (802.3at, 30 watt) versus the 1910's standard 802.3af, 15.4 watt output (and, a few advanced routing capabilities on the 2910, and optional 10Gb ports). So, it mostly seems to depend on if you think you will need that capability now, or in the foreseeable future. Obviously, a project of that size will require a fair amount of engineering, you will probably want to try and get as much help from your NVR software/hardware suppliers as you can.

It sounds like one of your other applications is holding that com port open, try changing the port number setting for your converter in the device manager, then try it again. *****Edit****** A good test to see if the problem is with your computer is to try and use Hyperterminal, and see if you can open a session on that port, that will tell you if another application is using that port.

Get the PIR inputs going. The best residential system I've done had three Pelco PTZ domes, controlled by a matrix switcher that had alarm inputs to call PTZ positions, and twelve wireless PIR's in various locations to call the presets as someone walked through, as well as several fixed cameras with tight shots on doors. Otherwise, the system is going to be limited by your response time (and that's going to be a lot longer if you are not home, as well!).

Milestone Essentials is about $50 USD MSRP per channel, and has about the widest device support list in the industry. The remote client is pretty well laid out, as well. It is a Windows based system for the server, as well as the client, though. You can get a 30 day demo of it from their site. Avigilon is another worth looking at, smaller product support list, but a very nice remote client, as well as great customer support. You may want to try to move your budget to that ~700 dollar range, for the exterior cameras, at least. Not much I've come across for less than that has been very worthwhile, from my experience.

A little bit of Googling around came up with this, it's a fairly good start. Wireshark isn't the easiest tool to use, but it's very powerful, and worth a little time to learn.

The CGI command does work with an ACM-4201 (I just tried it-the newer ones have an obnoxiously bright blue one on the front), I don't have a 7411 here to try, though. I do seem to remember that there are a few LED's on the board, you may turn off the power LED but not the others (the LAN link and activity ones would always stay on).

https://www.ccixpress.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10101&storeId=10051&productId=38668&langId=-1&channel=%24&customer=& Kind of a kludge if you don't really need it, though. Personally, I'd just get a better switch.....

A number of cameras I've come across are recognized as class 0, which means they could be anywhere from .44 to 12.95 watts. If the switch does not actually sense the wattage draw, it will assume full wattage draw from the camera, and may only allow a lower number of cameras per switch than what could actually be on the switch if the cameras represented their draw accurately.

I've started using some of the Hikvision DS-2CD752MF series cameras since Sanyo went under, and I've been fairly pleased with them. Reasonably easy install (if you take out that massive pigtail cable that you usually don't need), decent picture, decent price. Only issue so far is that with the IR equipped models, you can short out the IR assembly against the pivot ball assembly when trying to turn them to parallel a wall while wall mounted (they will not quite turn to view flush to a wall when past about halfway zoomed in). BTW, the engrish in the new firmware is better, much nicer interface, as well as having working ONVIF operation (I've tested it with Milestone and Avigilon ONVIF plugin, and it works ok.)

The renewal issues are in regards to continued product updates/feature enhancements (with Milestone and Exacq, at least). The systems will continue to operate, just updates/patches are not available. So far, Avigilon has not followed this path. I hope they don't change, it's one nice selling feature for them.

You have a problem then, multicasting is not supported over the internet. Depending on your outbound bandwidth, yes, you will have a limited number of clients available. You could look into having the stream hosted from a third-party host, but that can get very expensive, depending on the network bandwidth required.

Exacq hybrids can, but the software is a mixed bag, some nice features, some not so nice issues. I'd consider using Avigilon as an NVR, and using their encoders (one channel license will run a four channel encoder, and the encoders are pretty reasonable, too).

I (think) that what he is asking for is viewing a single camera at multiple viewing PC's throughout a building. If that's the case, he probably wants a camera that supports multicasting. Many IP cameras can do this, but the office network switches would need to support multicasting (spanning tree) as well, and a multicast IP address needs to be dedicated to the camera, then viewed in a browser.

You can try using Milestone's universal driver, notes are here http://www.milestonesys.com/support/technical+support/FAQ/FAQView?id=3365 Wireshark http://www.wireshark.org/ is an application that will let you look at the actual URI connection information from a browser session, to use in the universal driver setup.

To the OP: if the camera supports some type of input from the keyboard or mouse, you may be able to use Eventghost (freeware, http://www.eventghost.org/) to map joystick control to those inputs (you could try it with a cheap game joystick first). To moreper: the best plan here is to respond with pertinent, intelligible information.

I think he said "watch me for some tasty spam soon"... Or something like that. Maybe something was lost in the translation? WTF?

They have (had?) a backbox we always used to mount them with, part# VA-85BX. That way, you had plenty of room for connectors, and conduit side entry, if necessary.

I've been testing out ClearOS http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html for our office firewall/router, looks even better than pfSense, and a little easier to manage, too.

Newegg still has plenty of the old school Linksys WRT54GL routers in stock, I just ordered two yesterday.

You might also want to look at Stardot, they have integrated directly with certain weather stations to display data from them. They have features that make integration with webpages easier, too.

Be safe, best of luck and hope for you and your loved ones. Maybe you'll get some good video from your installs!

One other note, if systems have any viruses or spyware, you may, (most likely, will), want to turn off system restore, so that problem programs don't hide there and reinstall themselves from the restore directory. I've found Hiren's boot CD to be a great resource, especially to dig out really nasty problems that are hard to get out when the system is running on the OS.

Overall, those Sanyo cameras have performed very well for us, we have installed well over a hundred cameras of various models from that line. Unfortunately, Sanyo was sold to Panasonic recently, and have closed the security division (evidently, Panasonic bought Sanyo for their refrigerator and rechargeable battery divisions, and are closing down other departments). I'm testing a few replacements, but if anybody has a suggestion of a dome camera that installs and works as well as the Sanyo, I'm all ears!