IP cameras & NVR on existing network

[munrobasher 0]

Please bear with a newbie to this topic... Seasoned IT engineer and very familiar with most things network related. Understand LAN segments, routing, bridging, IP address etc. in office networking world but never really dabbled with NVR aside from helping a friend configure an unknown model Hikvision. Kind of get what they are all about

 

I have been installing some Ubiquiti Unifi access points for a client - internal and external on an interesting farm site with an office area. PoE and non-PoE cabling terminating at a patch panel with a 100Mbps switch (even with fibre internet they only get 20Mbps so gigabit is a bit of an overkill here). They mentioned that they were interested in surveillance so I'm doing a bit of research so I'm more familiar with the subject - although I may still recommend they go with somebody who specialises in this area.

 

My question is more about the network infrastructure. I've seen some cheap-n-cheerful Anran devices in eBay that one doubts are much cop but from a networking point of view, these appear to be sort of a Wi-Fi router on steroids, i.e. the IP cameras connect to the Wi-Fi in the NVR. Am I correct in saying that the IP cameras are on their own network and the NVR runs it's own DHCP server? Some of the Hikvision NVRs have a single LAN port so one assumes that the cameras can be on the same network as other devices such as laptops and printers. Some of the Nikvision NVR have PoE ports for the cameras. Do these Hikvision act as a router with DHCP server running the cameras on a separate network (subnet) or are these switches whereby the IP addresses are assigned by the "normal" network DHCP server?

 

The reason I'm digging here is that Wi-Fi built into the NVR is a non-starter due to the layout of the site. PoE direct from the NVR probably isn't going to work either due to the cable run lengths. So hence my thoughts about using Wi-Fi IP cameras over the existing Wi-Fi network. Is this possible or do NVRs have their own dedicated network because of bandwidth concerns?

 

Apologies for the FAQ nature of this request!