benf

I have two of these mounted vertically outside and haven't had any water issues yet

Are you referring to the Trendnet POE switch I linked? Assuming so but wanted to be sure. I haven't yet plugged in all 4 ports (3 active on each swtich at the moment) so am now worried I'm going to blow it out when I get cams 7 and 8 on there! **Edit** Never mind, just re-read and saw your reference to the Trendnet product. I think Santa is going to bring me a ZyXel for Christmas.

How is the fan noise on this unit, looking for something like this that runs quiet. Edit : Just saw this review We're running two of these in my office (Trendnet 8 port gigabit POE): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156420 They're fanless so of course are dead silent. Rock solid too.

There's a version of that TP-Link switch that does gigabit, click the "10/100/1000M Port" in the Capacity section on Amazon to see that one, reasonably priced too. There's also an 8 port version with all 8 ports POE. I'm running two of these at my crib: https://trendnet.com/langen/products/proddetail.asp?prod=100_TPE-S44 Not gigabit but reasonably priced and they've been rock solid for well over a year, one of them in the tack room of my barn that gets very hot in the summer. Depends on your security and bandwidth needs if you should go gigabit. If you had 4 of those cams maxed out I think you'd be at 64mbps, still under the 100mbps threshold, but keep in mind your other networking needs. If I were setting up a new system with 3meg+ cams and had the few extra bucks to splurge I'd certainly go for a gigabit switch just to be safe. For just testing a setup or a few cams though you should be fine with 100mbps.

Also keep in mind that cam may not be properly recognized by the Aver NVR. I have an EH6108 hybrid with an Acti D32 cam, which I knew wasn't officially supported by my NVR, and the only way I can it recognized is to change the cam to MJPEG and use the "generic" Acti profile on the EH6108. I can't get it to work in ONVIF mode. The quality is good enough but am disappointed I can't take advantage of the much lower bandwidth consuming H264. I swapped some emails with Aver tech support and sounds like they aren't planning any new IP cam integrations with their NVR's for awhile, no reason given.

By the way I did find a post in another forum about the bug where you can't access the Video page after upgrading to 0300e. In short, doing a hard reset (remove back cover and press reset button) apparently fixes it. I haven't tried it myself since I'm on older firmware but might be worth a shot for those having issues with ti.

I have the 0104a firmware, the version I'm still running on mine, if you still need that I can upload somewhere. (Also have 109a as well but it had horrible quality in night mode). As noted above though I don't think you can downgrade once you've gone v2 or higher. I'd like to try v3 but afraid to!

Good point, I did install the Acti product (which seemed kind of cumbersome) but never got around to testing it. We do have several non-Acti IP cams in place I'd like to try and utilize so not sure which would be more cost effective... switch to all Acti cams w/free NVR software or go with software than can handle multiple brands but with licensing fee.

You might want to take a look at this thread: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=28762 Some of that may be helpful in your quest.

Thank you for a very informative post. Since I'm currently in the market for these exact requirements I'd be interested in which NVR's or software recording products support multi stream cams (like hemispherics). For example, the Acti KCM-3911 can output 6 different streams simultaneously. The Axis M3007-PV also outputs multiple streams. I know the Milestone software product supports that, am currently looking into others that do. This is getting more specific/detailed but I'd also be interested in seeing licensing fees as it applies to that. For example, Milestone appears to charge per-stream/channel, not per device. So if it's 1 cam but you want access to all 6 streams/channels you need 6 licenses, and that's getting expensive as I'll be doing 4 or 5 hemispherics.

I have a new Nexxa 16 hybrid DVR (I believe it's an Eclipse brand but not sure) that is otherwise working fine. When I try to boot it up with one of their recommended/supported hard drives (WD30EURS - 3 TB Western Digital) it asks me if I want to delete all data to which I answer "yes" but then it never gets beyond the "Initiating system" message. If I try to remote in to the DVR via the web interface all I see is "format /dev /sda1" scrolling message. I tried a different supported drive, a a 160 gig model, which quickly formats and works correctly. I tried a second 3TB drive and get the same exact issue so am thinking this is a compatibility issue rather than a problem with the 3TB drives themselves. Anyone run into this before with this brand or any other? I removed the 160g drive and it has two EXT3 partitions and one SWAP partition (linux) so am wondering if I could create a similar drive configuration outside the DVR then install and get past the formatting issue is it's already pre-formatted. Here's the DVR info: http://www.cctvoutlet.com/DVRs/Hybrid_DVRs_NVRs/nvr-network-recorder-nexxa16.html

Good idea, hadn't considered that. I don't think though that will do anything to improve the impact it's having on the overall internet bandwidth though, it's more about just doing it the right way. Is that correct?

For "internal" networks that's definitely true and not an issue I've run into. My problem is with the lousy internet upload speed at my location and the network cams eating up *that* bandwidth when I remote view. I'm in a semi-remote residential area and doubt I'll be seeing faster speeds offered anytime soon, so in the meantime have to dial back the bandwidth usage on my cams and deal with blocky/jumpy video, and worry about bandwidth I'm using while someone at the house might be surfing the net. Viewing at the house though the IP cams are gorgeous, no complaints at all about that quality. I would certainly be running all analog cams if I had a choice given my basic surveillance needs but had to go IP in a few spots due to long cable runs and interference.

I still have much to learn myself but can speak a bit to your last paragraph. I have an 850k upload DSL connection and remote live viewing is pretty good but you definitely have to dial down the resolution and/or FPS, or throttle bandwidth usage, or it will easily max out your upload bandwidth. Currently have a single Vivotek IP8332 cam (soon to be 3), and 5 analog cams, hooked to an Aver EH6108 hybrid DVR The one thing I've noticed, or more like my wife has noticed, is when remote viewing it really slows down the internet at the house if she's surfing the net or something. Totally understand why but is a side effect I hadn't considered when going with network cams. My old analog based DVR, though a much lower resolution, consumed very little bandwidth. I've throttled the network bandwidth usage to 128K overall at the DVR, which seems to be about as low as I can go and get what I consider acceptable live viewing, but still slows down the internet at the house. Not sure if I'm doing something else wrong or not configured correctly, but is semi-frustrating with me being a computer/tech person. I can't seem to find a sweet spot on video performance for the IP cam, at least when compared to my analogs, that doesn't kill my internet bandwidth. Anyway, I know that's all very generalized information. Essentially I'm just confirming what you already know... there's a lots of trial and error/tweaking in your future.

Good stuff. Thanks for all the detailed info, that helps a lot.