80 analog cameras converted to IP. Help Please

[secur 0]

Hello,

I have a site that has 72 inside fixed cameras on coax and 7 outside PTZ cameras on fiber. All cameras video work fine. The inside fixed are being converted to IP with Sony SNT-v704 video servers. Everything is ran back to 2 rack mounted HP Servers running server 2008 with plenty of storage space. 2 client computers running ONSSI software with 50 inch monitors . My problem is the speed of the network is very slow. The cameras randomly loose connection to the network and start and stop and I loose control of the PTZ cameras. They start to pan and then just keep going. They work fine when in test mode it only happens when I go thru the lan and not all the time. This lan is just for the cctv system there is nothing else on it. This is all new construction with all new cable. The contractor ran the wrong cable for the system (coax). I think my problem is with the switch slowing down the network. I am trying to push video from all 80 cameras through 20 SNT Vt04 servers then to one 24 port switch to the servers. Any help or suggestions as to what would have to be added to this system to make it work properly would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Sawbones 0]

This is a gigabit network, right?

[Soundy 1]

What make and model of switch are you using? That could be a f*kuvalot of traffic, you probably want a good enterprise-grade switch to handle it, not some cheap $150 Belkin or something. And yes, it should be gigabit.

[secur 0]

The switch is Netvanta model 1234 st 24 Auto-sensing 10/100Base-T ports and Two 10/100/1000Base-T ports. The Sony SNT V704 is 100/10Base-T. The NICs in the servers and clients are gigabit.

[Sawbones 0]

The video server you're describing does 640x480 at 25FPS for each channel. We'll assume a 35kb frame size, and each server has four channels... so that's:

 

35kb * 25FPS * 4 channels = 3.5 megabits per second.

 

Each four-port server is going to put out 3.5Mb/sec of data, multiplied by the number of servers you have, plus the PTZs... (feel free to correct my math)

 

Conservatively, we're talking about a steady 70-80 Mb/sec of data from different network sources, and maybe more... which once you figure in protocol overhead from that many different network sources, could easily saturate a 100Mb switch and lead to drop-outs.

 

Soundy is right. You need a high-quality, full-gigabit switch... preferably enterprise-grade. The switch you have isn't a dirt-cheap consumer-grade switch, it's just not fast enough.

[thewireguys 3]

Have you done any bandwidth calculations? I used AXIS's design tool and set it to 72 channels 6fps/D1/Mjpeg/30compression and I came up with a total of 95.9Mbit/s. It is impressive if I switch to h.264 compression, total bandwidth drops to 11mbit/s

[Soundy 1]

This is all new construction with all new cable. The contractor ran the wrong cable for the system (coax).

 

Um just a thought, slightly aside, but I think I would be forcing the contractor to correct his mistake and pull in the proper cable here... especially if it's leading to extra expense for YOU (ie. the video servers). Either that, or slap him with the bill for any additional time and materials required for you to work around HIS mistake (something we did recently, where the electricians only ran 1" and 3/4" EMT for us to pull *9* camera runs through - we had to use Cat5 with baluns instead of coax, so we billed the cost of the baluns back to them).

 

It won't necessarily solve your network problems, you'll still need a better switch (or switches) to handle the traffic...

[Sawbones 0]

Choice of networking hardware is critical for highly-saturated networks like yours... and that includes choice of NICs. Here's a link to get you started:

 

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/gigeth32bit/gig-eth-32bit-2.html

 

That's a nifty review by Xbit labs on a number of gigabit network cards, where you can actually see the differences created by drivers, frame-sizes, OS, brands, bus-width, and so forth.

 

There's a lot of tweaking you can do to get the maximum out of your network, but I think a simple upgrade to gigabit would serve you well.

[secur 0]

Thanks for all the quick response. I wish having the contractor repull was an option. We took the the job after the coax was ran our sales person said we could do it with the coax. Then went and purchased all this equipment without getting any design help from anyone. He no longer works for our company but we still have to get it working. We have so many pieces it is amazing we have got as far as we have. Besides the 20 Ipela boxes we have protocol converters for the PTZ cameras Pelco D to Pelco P and fiber converters it is a mess.

It looks like a new switch will be the next and hopefully the last piece of this puzzle. Thanks again for all the advice I was about out of Ideas.

[zmxtech 0]

A Couple of Cisco 3750 POE's switches cascaded would my choice.

 

Intel NICs in the servers ..

[Soundy 1]

^Why would you pay a premium for PoE switches in this case?

[Sawbones 0]

Those video servers are not PoE...

 

I'd use a standard rack-mount gigabit switch.

[Soundy 1]

Even if they were PoE, they're already in place and obviously already powered, so there wouldn't really be an advantage to using a PoE switch... just extra expense.

[crirvine 0]

We are running almost the same setup. 50 axis IP cameras, 2 24 port 1 GB POE switchs, 1 6 port 1gig router with 5 gig through put, 1 custom built server with 2003 server 20 1 TB harddrives 2000 watt power supply 1 EXON 2.66 gig quad core 16 gig ram server custom built buy us with a emergengy backup server with 6 TB hard disk 1 XEON 2.66 gig quad core with 8 gig of ram to run when doing maintence on the main server. 3 control stations with 52 inch monitors all run on cat 6 9 of which are wireless with 5 of those PTZ's. You are gonna have to have an IT background and understand networking to work through the system. Also you need to go to onSSI training school. Also I hope you are not using the customers network to carry your video on as it will not hold up to the traffic. You have to look at each control station in the total calculations. If all cameras use 50 MB bandwidth total the each control station will use 50 MB of bandwidth for a total of 150 MB. THE HARDWARE IS THE KEY LINKSYS HOME ROUTERS AND SWITCHES WILL NOT CARRY THE LOADS THAT THESE SYSTEMS GENERATE.

[zmxtech 0]

I rest my case.......

[sarannan 0]

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[sarannan 0]

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