HD IP Camera Gigabit Switch - Wifi Router Slowdown Issue

[quaidorsay 0]

Hi everyone,

 

So i just installed 10x 2 Megapixel IP cameras for a customer. All cameras are connected to a POE (un managed) Gigabit switch.

 

The cameras work. However, when I connect the switch to a LAN port on a Wifi Router (which has 10/100 ethernet ports) which also connects to the internet on it's WAN port, the internet won't work (hence the customer can't access the server for remote view), and the router can't be accessed by the browser on the pc unless I unplug the switch (which carries the ip cameras) from the wifi router.

 

illustration: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8esbfjwi4oc3ny4/ip%20camera%20setup.pdf

 

I have tried the methods of having the wifi router and the cameras on the switch on two different ip subnet's:

 

i.e. The wifi router on 192.168.2.1-192.168.2.254 and the cameras on 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.254

 

But this method does not work because the router acts in dhcp mode I believe, and when I connect the switch to the wifi router lan port, it will give an 192.168.2.1-192.168.2.254 address to the Camera.

 

I have also tried reducing the amount of data being pushed through the switch by reducing the cameras from 2 mega pixel to 1 megapixel but this does not help as much. There is still a slowdown in internet until you can't use internet at all.

 

I will be soon testing an alternative of getting a wifi router with a gigabit WAN and LAN port and seeing if that solves the issue.

 

Also currently the Server which stores in RAID 0 currently, has its CPU always at 100%. The CPU is a E8440 (Dual Core) with 4GB of ram. I guess I should upgrade to an Intel i7 (6 Cores) because when you have this many cameras you need more cores to handle the load.

 

Also, the 16 port un-managed gigabit switch I am using currently is a D-Link DGS-1016D.

 

Does anyone here have experience in this sought of setup? I'm thinking of getting this sought of setup into VLAN setup. And using two central Cisco catalyst managed switches but I'll try the cheap alternative first, which is getting the wifi router to have gigabit ethernet ports for all it's wan/lan ports.

[atari37 0]

This sounds like a switching loop. Do you ONLY have one cable going from the switch to the wireless router?

 

How many NICs are in the Server storage? Do you have another cable going from the server storage to one of the ports on the wireless router or back into the switch?? Double check your wiring.

 

If this is not a switching loop, then the 10 cameras are just overwhelming the network. Have you tried hooking up only 2 to 5 cameras to see how the network behaves?

[capz 0]

Add another gigabit network card solely for the cameras. Set it to 192.168.1.xxx in your case (default gateway blank). Connect the switch to that. Then the original network card, set to 192.168.2.xxx will connect to the router (default gateway is the router ip). Then port forward to the dvr.

[ssmith10pn 0]

Not a lot of details here...

 

IP address of the server

DHCP scope of the router

Subnet Mask

 

Brand and model of the switch

Are the cameras on static IPs? If so what are they?

[quaidorsay 0]

This sounds like a switching loop. Do you ONLY have one cable going from the switch to the wireless router?

 

Yes I have only one Cat6 straight-through going from the switch to the wireless router. I was considering trunking by adding another cable, but not sure if that'd work as a proper trunk on a wireless router as compared to a proper level 3 cisco router.

 

How many NICs are in the Server storage? Do you have another cable going from the server storage to one of the ports on the wireless router or back into the switch?? Double check your wiring.

 

There is normally just one gigabit NIC on the server storage. Trying to solve the issue of the wifi router slowdown, I added an additional usb 10/100 NIC to connect to the router separately. I put the gigabit nic on the server connected to gigabit switch with the cameras as 192.168.1.1 and the cameras using that as the gateway. Then I assigned the added usb NIC (192.168.2.4) to the wifi router gateway (192.168.2.1). This still didn't solve the problem.

 

If this is not a switching loop, then the 10 cameras are just overwhelming the network. Have you tried hooking up only 2 to 5 cameras to see how the network behaves?

 

Atari37, you're a Genius! I'll try this when I get back to the site next week! Thanks for your help champ!

 

Add another gigabit network card solely for the cameras. Set it to 192.168.1.xxx in your case (default gateway blank). Connect the switch to that. Then the original network card, set to 192.168.2.xxx will connect to the router (default gateway is the router ip). Then port forward to the dvr.

 

Hi Capz, I added a 10/100 Nic on the server as I wrote to Atari37 above. However, I will try your solution as well by adding a gigabit NIC.

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Not a lot of details here...

 

IP address of the server

DHCP scope of the router

Subnet Mask

 

G'day Smith,

The IP address of the server is 192.168.1.1

The DHCP Scope of the wifi router is 192.168.2.1-192.168.2.254

Subnet Mask for both is 255.255.255.0 (standard)

 

Brand and model of the switch

Are the cameras on static IPs? If so what are they?

 

Brand and Model of switch as I wrote is D-Link DGS-1016D.

 

The cameras are on static ip's, they are

Cam 1 - 192.168.1.101

Cam 2 - 192.168.1.102

Cam 3 - 192.168.1.103

Cam 4 - 192.168.1.104

Cam 5 - 192.168.1.105

Cam 6 - 192.168.1.106

Cam 7 - 192.168.1.107

Cam 8 - 192.168.1.108

Cam 9 - 192.168.1.109

Cam 10 - 192.168.1.110

 

And they (the cameras) are all pointed at the Server (gateway) which is 192.168.1.1, sub:255.255.255.0

 

Cheers, Q!

[Brenning 0]

Could be the switch processor being overloaded, tricky to tell though as its not managed. As others have suggested try using just a couple of cameras at first to see what happens. Can you still access the server internally when the problem is hapening?

 

Brenning

[ssmith10pn 0]

A drawing of 2 separate NICs as was stated above.

[capz 0]

Im thinking the cameras are sending packets to the router Even when theyre not being viewed from the mobile client. The cameras and nic 2 don't need a default gateway so leave those blank. Subnet mask can be whatever. Server ip nic 1 leave as is. I can see internet slowing down when viewing the cameras over wan but they shouldn't when just streaming to the server.

[ak357 0]

Im thinking the cameras are sending packets to the router Even when theyre not being viewed from the mobile client. The cameras and nic 2 don't need a default gateway so leave those blank. Subnet mask can be whatever. Server ip nic 1 leave as is. I can see internet slowing down when viewing the cameras over wan but they shouldn't when just streaming to the server.

I can see u learn a lot and fast

[capz 0]

All thanks to you my man!

[cwm123 0]

It seems like you just have the addressing a bit messed up.

 

You say the server IP is 192.168.1.1 & the DHCP scope offered is 192.168.2.1-254

But then that the subnet is 255.255.255.0; which means you are not getting both of those address ranges. Then you say all are pointed at the server which is the gateway but the gateway should be the router.

 

Would suggest that the LAN interface of the router is 192.168.1.1

server gets a static IP of 192.168.1.10

cameras stay where they are

DHCP scope 192.168.1.150-254

everything has subnet mask 255.255.255.0

[capz 0]

I think this is how he had it set up originally and it brought the internet to its knees. The routers' lan ports are being overloaded. The cameras shouldn't be pointed at the router at all, only connected to the server. He may still have the Internet slowdown but ONLY when viewing through the mobile client. If he wants to solve that problem he'll need a better router or faster Internet with higher upload speeds.

[cwm123 0]

Yea, there are clearly multiple issues here. One of them is an addressing/routing problem; because the addressing isn't right, there likely is a situation where there are both address conflicts and excessive traffic hitting the router LAN port (I'd guess the the address 192.168.1.1 is used by two devices - the server and the router LAN port). If you get the addressing right, the cameras won't be spraying the router with traffic... the network switch takes care of only sending traffic to the destination port it needs to go to (old hubs sent the packets everywhere).

 

Beyond that it seems like the server is under spec for the traffic.

 

But upgrading the router ports won't make any difference unless the WAN is faster than something around 100Mbs.

[capz 0]

I'm not seeing where he got the addressing wrong. Router is on 2.1 giving an ip to nic 1 in the 2.1--254 range. Cameras and nic 2 in the 1.1 range. Internet works fine unless the cameras are connected. The only mistake I see is the default gateway for nic two is unnecessary and most likely the problem. I hope he chimes back in I'm curious about this one.

[quaidorsay 0]

It seems like you just have the addressing a bit messed up.

 

You say the server IP is 192.168.1.1 & the DHCP scope offered is 192.168.2.1-254

But then that the subnet is 255.255.255.0; which means you are not getting both of those address ranges. Then you say all are pointed at the server which is the gateway but the gateway should be the router.

 

Would suggest that the LAN interface of the router is 192.168.1.1

server gets a static IP of 192.168.1.10

cameras stay where they are

DHCP scope 192.168.1.150-254

everything has subnet mask 255.255.255.0

 

This was my original configuration. The wifi router used to be 192.168.1.1. Server used to be 192.168.1.2 and cameras are still the same addresses, and they always pointed to the gateway 192.168.1.1. So I changed the router to go on a different nic, which was the USB 10/100 nic. and I kept the server on the gigabit nic but just changed the address to 192.168.1.1.

 

What Capz told me is correct, (and I will do it when I return back on to site in the next few weeks because I'm currently busy with other jobs, and I have another similar installation for another client/customer right now too!); that is to not point my cameras to a gateway and just leave it blank in the individual camera settings.

 

I think this is how he had it set up originally and it brought the internet to its knees. The routers' lan ports are being overloaded. The cameras shouldn't be pointed at the router at all, only connected to the server. He may still have the Internet slowdown but ONLY when viewing through the mobile client. If he wants to solve that problem he'll need a better router or faster Internet with higher upload speeds.

 

You are always spot-on dude, thanks! This is exactly how I had the configuration at the beginning. I can't get faster upload speeds because that is the limit of the adsl2+ connection at that site, however, I can just say the problem is the fact that the camera traffic is flooding the router, and that is even if the gateway is pointed at the server, 192.168.1.1. I'm going to go by both Cwm's idea, and your idea Capz, by not pointing the cameras to the server but leaving it blank in the gateway section and having the server on a new address like 192.168.1.10.

 

Yea, there are clearly multiple issues here. One of them is an addressing/routing problem; because the addressing isn't right, there likely is a situation where there are both address conflicts and excessive traffic hitting the router LAN port (I'd guess the the address 192.168.1.1 is used by two devices - the server and the router LAN port). If you get the addressing right, the cameras won't be spraying the router with traffic... the network switch takes care of only sending traffic to the destination port it needs to go to (old hubs sent the packets everywhere).

 

Correct, however, I tried to put another nic on and pointed the nics to different gateways and this didn't solve the issue. The router was still being sprayed with traffic hence the internet slowdown then you couldn't access the wifi router/wan-internet at all on other wireless devices.

 

Beyond that it seems like the server is under spec for the traffic.

 

But upgrading the router ports won't make any difference unless the WAN is faster than something around 100Mbs.

 

Capz is on to something, I believe the server is in "broadcast" mode when it shouldn't be. However, I will upgrade the server and the router in the coming weeks and should have a solution. I'm automatically upgrading the wifi router (to a N900 Netgear Gigabit Router - WNDR4500 with all gigabit ethernet and wan ports) on this current new job, which has 16x 2-megapixel ip cameras, 2x 2-megapixel IP PTZ speed domes. The server will be an i7, whereas the previous job was an E8440, dual core, when it should at least be quad core, i5 or hex core i7 spec server. The connection on this new site is the same as the one before, just adsl2+. Australian internet speeds are much slower than North American internet speeds. Although I believe the problem is not with the upload speeds but rather the network issue. I believe even if the internet upload speed was above 1000 mb/s, this issue of the bottle neck would still happen. I believe it is a networking address issue and the fact that the router is poor (Asus RT-N12LX).

 

I'm not seeing where he got the addressing wrong. Router is on 2.1 giving an ip to nic 1 in the 2.1--254 range. Cameras and nic 2 in the 1.1 range. Internet works fine unless the cameras are connected. The only mistake I see is the default gateway for nic two is unnecessary and most likely the problem. I hope he chimes back in I'm curious about this one.

 

I'll try to implement the solutions provided by everyone here soon. Thanks for all your help guys, you are all truly awesome!

 

Cheers,

 

Q

[atari37 0]

Let me share a link with you.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/lan-switch13.htm

 

I still believe your problem is related to a loop in the network which is causing a broadcast storm. Let me ask you this. What other network configurations did you setup (email, nas, ftp, etc) on the cameras? Maybe one of those configurations are trying to contact a node that's not known by the switch, server, and router causing them to flood the network until it comes to a screeching halt.

 

As previously suggested, get rid of the default gateway setting on the cameras. That will stop all the unnecessary traffic from making it to the router.

[quaidorsay 0]

Let me share a link with you.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/lan-switch13.htm

 

I still believe your problem is related to a loop in the network which is causing a broadcast storm. Let me ask you this. What other network configurations did you setup (email, nas, ftp, etc) on the cameras? Maybe one of those configurations are trying to contact a node that's not known by the switch, server, and router causing them to flood the network until it comes to a screeching halt.

 

As previously suggested, get rid of the default gateway setting on the cameras. That will stop all the unnecessary traffic from making it to the router.

 

Hi Atari, thanks for your link.

 

In regards to the other network configurations, well I didn't adjust anything on the cameras other than changing their previous default address of 192.168.1.158 to 192.168.1.101-192.168.1.110. However, as Capz said, I pointed the cameras to the gateway of 192.168.1.1 and left it like that. I'll delete that address from the cameras gateway settings next time I visit the site in two weeks. If that doesn't work, I will change the wifi router with 10/100 ethernet ports to one with all gigabit ports.

 

Cheers, Q

[Swann Tech 0]

Getting rid of the gateway won't stop broadcast traffic from the cameras though. If they are broadcasting too much they could be overwhelming the router until the buffers overload causing the dropout in comms.

 

It would probably be a good idea to run Wireshark and look at the traffic on the link from the camera switch.

 

http://www.wireshark.org/

[quaidorsay 0]

****ISSUE IS SOLVED!! ****Thanks to everyone here!

 

So adjusting the gateway method does not work, the configuration forces you to point the cameras at a gateway, i.e. you can't leave it blank. What I did was buy a new (wifi) router (an inexpensive TL-WR1043ND) with all gigabit LAN AND WAN ports, not 10/100 ports, which replaced the previous Asus RT-N12LX (<-- PIECE OF CRAP ALERT).

 

- I made the new router 192.168.1.1, subnet 255.255.255.0 (standard) and made the cameras gateway to this address.

- I made the server to be static ip, 192.168.1.7, subnet 255.255.255.0 , gateway 192.168.1.1

-I plugged the existing adsl2+ router into the new wifi router's WAN port, the adsl2+'s modem routers ip address is 192.168.0.1, subnet 255.255.255.0

- The 10 megapixel IP cameras have ip's between 192.168.1.101-192.168.1.110. However, the standard configuration on the new TP LINK TL-WR1043ND is to have the dhcp address range between 192.168.1.100-192.168.1.199. So because that the range where it begins is so close to the cameras ip's, I made the range start and finish at 192.168.1.7-192.168.1.254.

 

Getting rid of the gateway won't stop broadcast traffic from the cameras though. If they are broadcasting too much they could be overwhelming the router until the buffers overload causing the dropout in comms.

 

It would probably be a good idea to run Wireshark and look at the traffic on the link from the camera switch.

 

http://www.wireshark.org/

 

I ran the wireshark capture tests and also speed tests.

 

I did these tests after I unplugged all the IP cameras from the gigabit switch, and then I started the wireshark capture and filtered my capture, then plugged the first camera, ran a speedtest, all good, then plugged the next camera, ran a speed test, all good, no slow downs, then up to the tenth camera, ran a speed test, no slowdowns, all with their megapixel settings still intact, I didn't descale the amount of image quality, they still record at 2 megapixels each, and I had no problems with the new wifi router or internet connection. In fact, the server which is a Intel Dual Core E8400 with 4GB ram running windows xp pro, was no longer having CPU usage at 100% constantly, but now at 68-89% CPU usage on average. All that by a 10 minute network adjustment.

 

I hope this information helps anyone out there, and I want to thank everyone again for their support.

 

I am currently working on a few other commercial ip installations, on one, I'm doing is over 200 2-5 Megapixel IP cameras however, the equipment is better, with Cisco Catlyst C3750G stacking 48 port poe switches, more cameras, but with stackwise cables at the back, and 10Gbit fiber optic uplinks will make things easier. Also have the motherboard to have dual lan port teaming, and that means not having an effective 1 Gb/s Link but having a 2Gb/s link which allows less load than on a single lan port on the server. However, you will need a managed switch that is compliant with your board/nic's teaming/bonding method.

 

Cheers, Q.

[ssmith10pn 0]

Personally I would configure the ADSL modem in bridge mode so your internet didn't have to go through NAT twice.

[ssmith10pn 0]

Also have the motherboard to have dual lan port teaming, and that means not having an effective 1 Gb/s Link but having a 2Gb/s link which allows less load than on a single lan port on the server. However, you will need a managed switch that is compliant with your board/nic's teaming/bonding method.

 

Did teaming before. It's not nessessary and will cause more problems than its worth. You will hit software hardware limits before you get close to 1Gbt.

[quaidorsay 0]

Personally I would configure the ADSL modem in bridge mode so your internet didn't have to go through NAT twice.

 

Actually, I just realised the modem has no routing function so yes, your method idea to go bridge mode and not go through NAT twice is correct.

 

Did teaming before. It's not nessessary and will cause more problems than its worth. You will hit software hardware limits before you get close to 1Gbt.

 

I guess you're right, I don't think hardware or software reach 1 Gb/s speeds. Thanks Smith for your advice.