NVR with built in POE switch vs. NAS and POE Switch?

Hi,

I have a Hikvision camera setup (3mp bullets and dome) and a Hikvision NVR. After some preliminary testing, I found that I can't directly connect to the cameras that are connected to the NVR and the NVR doesn't allow me to tweak all the camera settings. After some thought, it seems like I can go two routes as I can still return the NVR.

1. Keep Hikvision NVR and buy a POE injector for when I need to connect directly to a camera, taking the camera out of the NVR environment for tweaking purposes and then reconnect when done.

2. Return the Hikvision NVR and buy a NAS and separate 8-port POE switch and have all the 3MP Hikvision cameras record to that. This would allow me to connect to any camera at will and the camera firmware appears to support this option.

Problem is that I don't know how viable the NAS setup is. Can I record 8 streams of 3MP data to the NAS w/ a single drive at once and it will keep up? How do you go about making sure the content gets overwritten properly since you have independent cameras sending to the NAS?

I was looking at the Synology DS213 NAS enclosure ($300) and then I'd need some combination of gigabit switches (at least for traffic volume to NAS?) to tie it all together for another ($250-300). So the difference in options is like $425 for the NVR and POE injector setup or $600 for the NAS and switch setup.

I'd really appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts on this topic.

Thanks!

Chad

If you are happy with the NVR, I would take the option 1. I have used many Hik IP cameras and NVRs, but I have not used any of their NVRs with included POE ports.

That said, I think there is a post somewhere on the forum that explains a way to make the cameras directly accessible from the network. I think you have to telnet on your NVR and change some routing options, but once it is done, it is done forever. If you can not find it yourself, hopefully someone will have the link to the thread.

That said, I think there is a post somewhere on the forum that explains a way to make the cameras directly accessible from the network. I think you have to telnet on your NVR and change some routing options, but once it is done, it is done forever. If you can not find it yourself, hopefully someone will have the link to the thread.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply and the valuable info about telnet-ing into the NVR. I found this thread...

http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=35369&p=217655&hilit=telnet+nvr#p217655

...regarding Dahua NVRs but I would expect the procedure to be the same as long as it is running some flavor of Linux.

Thanks!

Chad

Ahhh, yes, that is the thread I had read, I thought it was for Hikvision NVRs. Hopefully something like that can be done with Hikvision, please let us know if you have any luck.

Actually it spun off of a thread I made about hitting cameras on an nvr with a laptop connected to the nvr.

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=35962

This can be done with dahua cameras/nvr, so I'm not sure you can do this with hikvision. Worth a try. There's a video explaining it too-

31ch1PYQ0C8

I can confirm the instruction from the video works for Hikvision NVR with POE too.

I will try out the telnet command/addroute stuff when I get to the office.

Your best option is to follow the instruction from the video. You can keep internet going if you have Wifi on laptop and connect the lan port to an empty PoE switch.

Your other option is keep the NVR, buy a separate 8 ch PoE, keep using the NVR to record. Under cameras, switch from 'Plug and Play' to 'Manual' and add each camera's IP address to the NVR, this disables the built-in PoE switch.

Good luck!

I would like to thank everyone who has responded to this thread. All the responses have been extremely helpful!