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Haha, well that’s a classic translation error on my end! I completely read 'home office' as a residential WFH setup, not the UK Gov Home Office. That context makes way more sense now. Thanks for the clarification, @sixwheeledbeast. You hit the nail on the head regarding liability, @sixwheeledbeast. 'You get what you pay for' is the universal truth in this industry. If a client insists on running a heavy CCTV load over their aging IT infrastructure against our recommendations, getting that formal sign-off in writing is the only way to sleep at night. @al-yeti - I'm glad (well, not glad, but you know what I mean) that you've seen that exact same issue. Murphy's Law guarantees the switch buffer will choke exactly when the incident occurs, never when the frame is empty! Appreciate the insights, gents. Good to know the headaches of existing infrastructure are universal. - Yesterday
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Lol I meant gov home office @sixwheeledbeast However yes, agreed, I have seen this a few frames dropped just when you need it on some setups- 7 replies
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I took "home office" as Home Office or a government building. You get what you pay for at the end of the day. If the agreement is to use existing infra, even if you don't recommend it and you have that in writing; that's up to them.- 7 replies
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Fair point, @al-yeti. For a standard home office or a couple of basic 2MP cams, the 'plug and play' approach usually holds up fine. However, we're seeing more residential clients pushing for high-bitrate 4K/8K deployments and multi-node mesh setups where the margin for error is much smaller. In those cases, that 'constanish feed' starts to stutter during high-motion events if the hardware can't handle the micro-bursts. I guess I'm just trying to build a more predictable baseline so we’re not the ones getting called back when the owner notices a few dropped frames during a security event. In your experience, at what camera count or resolution do you usually start seeing these 'non-critical' systems actually start to break down?
- Last week
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Ammaari Stones joined the community -
What setup will any of this matter? Many systems are just not that critical, even some sites which require feeds for the home office are using the existing networks they don't care that much either as long as there's a constanish feed
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Just to add to my original post - I’ve been digging into the chipset specs of some common entry-level 16-port switches. It seems many share the same Realtek silicon with very limited ingress buffer depth. Has anyone noticed if moving to Broadcom-based hardware actually mitigates those 4K frame drops, or is it purely a firmware-level QoS issue? Also, I’ve been looking into STP/FTP grounding on another project today. Could induced noise from poor shielding be a 'hidden' contributor that pushes these shallow buffers over the edge during burst traffic? Curious if anyone has seen a correlation there.
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Just to add to my original post - I’ve been digging into the chipset specs of some common entry-level 16-port switches. It seems many share the same Realtek silicon with very limited ingress buffer depth. Has anyone noticed if moving to Broadcom-based hardware actually mitigates those 4K frame drops, or is it purely a firmware-level QoS issue?
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Following up on my recent post about IGMP Snooping, I wanted to share some field data regarding a performance killer that many budget managed switches hide in their spec sheets: Packet Buffer Memory. We often focus on the total PoE budget, but when deploying high-bitrate 4K or even 8K cameras, I’ve found that small buffers (under 1.5MB) on 8-port "web-managed" switches are the primary cause of random "no signal" or stuttering issues during high-motion events. My Recent Findings: Burst Traffic: When multiple cameras trigger H.265 I-frames simultaneously (e.g., a car driving through multiple FOVs), the switch buffer fills up instantly. If the buffer is shallow, the switch just drops frames, causing the NVR to lose the stream briefly. Management Lag: As I mentioned to al-yeti previously, this buffer congestion often spills over to the CPU of the switch, making the web management UI completely unresponsive until the traffic drops. The "Hull Logic" Workaround: Sometimes, strictly separating the uplinks and disabling flow control on the camera ports actually helped stability, as it forced the NVR to handle the packet pacing instead of relying on a weak switch CPU. Question for the group: > Does anyone have a "go-to" brand for 8-port or 16-port switches that actually lists their packet buffer specs and handles micro-bursts without choking? I’m trying to move away from some of the cheaper units I’ve been testing lately. Curious to hear your experiences with 4K deployments on mid-range gear.
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Big Canary Bird joined the community -
Following up on a great discussion I had here recently about physical network separation, I wanted to share some bench-test results regarding budget-friendly managed switches (the kind we often see coming out of the Asian markets recently). We’ve all been tempted by the price point of 'web-managed' switches for small-to-medium CCTV jobs. However, I’ve found that their implementation of IGMP Snooping and STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) is often inconsistent under heavy multicast load from 4K/8MP cameras. A few things I’ve noticed in the field: Buffer Overflow: On some 128MB buffer models, once you hit about 60% backplane capacity with constant video streams, the management interface becomes unresponsive, even if the traffic keeps flowing. Multicast Leaks: Despite IGMP being 'On', some budget firmware fails to correctly prune ports, leading to packet flooding on the uplink to the NVR. The 'Hull' Logic Fix: As al-yeti jokingly mentioned 'any old how' recently, I’ve found that for these specific budget units, disabling all 'smart' features and treating them as unmanaged (or strictly using physical separation) actually results in higher uptime. Has anyone else found a specific 'budget' brand that actually handles Layer 2 management properly without a full Cisco/Juniper price tag? Curious to hear your field experiences.
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Haha, the 'any old how' approach definitely has its place when you're in a pinch, but physical separation is still my gold standard for sleeping soundly at night. My main reason for pushing physical over VLAN in these multi-node PoE setups is troubleshooting speed. If the client’s IT guy decides to ‘optimize’ the main office network and resets a core switch, I don't want my camera backbone going down with it. There’s nothing quite like the simplicity of a dedicated pipe that doesn't care what the rest of the building is doing. Out of curiosity, when you do go the VLAN route for these, do you usually stick with Layer 2 at the edge or do you prefer routing it at the core to keep the broadcast traffic completely isolated?
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Seperate physical network, occasionally vlan it Or think of how they do it in hull and get it to work any old how lol
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Spot on, James. It’s always the STP (Spanning Tree) or IGMP Snooping that bites you when you least expect it with managed gear. In a high-traffic CCTV environment, I’ve seen those 'optimizations' cause more heartaches than they solve. For these types of multi-node builds, I’ve found that a solid, high-backplane unmanaged switch at the edge—and keeping the 'smart' stuff strictly at the core—tends to keep the ghost in the machine away. Appreciate the feedback, guys! Spot on. 'Removing variables' is the best piece of advice anyone can give in this trade. The moment you share a backbone with a client's generic IT traffic, you're at the mercy of their firmware updates and VLAN misconfigurations. I've been pushing for fibre backbones on larger residential and commercial sites specifically for that reason—it future-proofs the bandwidth and eliminates EMI issues in one go. There’s nothing worse than an intermittent 'ghost' lag that only happens when the site IT decides to run a backup during peak monitoring hours. Dedicated is definitely the way to go for peace of mind.
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Totally get that. Managed switches can be a nightmare if the IGMP snooping or STP isn't dialed in perfectly for multicast video traffic—suddenly you're chasing 'network' issues that are actually just configuration headaches. For those budget-conscious builds, I've started leaning towards high-bandwidth 'unmanaged plus' or web-managed gear. It gives just enough visibility to see if a port is flapping without the complexity of a full enterprise stack. Keeps the project on budget and the service calls to a minimum. Do you guys usually go with a separate physical network for the CCTV, or just VLAN it off on the main house/office net?
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IrnBruMan joined the community -
Separate network and unmanaged switches. Consider fibre for backbone. You're removing variables that way. Sharing the sites network will only mean liaising with IT departments and intermittent issues you have no control over. Fine, if your site IT on a job creation scheme not so good for us.
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Any switch that works, dlink , hik , anything within a budget , never really had issue except some of the managed switches cause some headaches
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Hi al-yeti, not selling anything here! I'm a system integrator focusing on networking and security infrastructure. I just noticed these latency issues recurring in recent multi-node builds and thought sharing some field-tested tweaks might help others facing the same "ghost in the machine." I'm actually curious—in your 16+ channel installs, do you usually stick with dedicated CCTV switches like Hikvision/Dahua, or do you prefer enterprise gear like Cisco/Aruba for the backbone?
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paulfizz joined the community -
Hi everyone, Having worked on several high-end residential and industrial security integrations recently, I’ve noticed a recurring issue with video lag and frame drops when scaling beyond 8+ IP cameras on a single managed switch. A few "field-tested" adjustments that have significantly improved stability for my builds: MTU Tuning: Standard 1500 is usually fine, but in high-traffic VLANs, ensuring your NVR and switches are perfectly synced on Jumbo Frame settings (if supported) can reduce overhead. Subnet Isolation: Never let the security traffic mingle with the home/office guest Wi-Fi. It sounds basic, but broadcast storms from IoT devices are the #1 killer of smooth 4K streams. Power Budgeting: Always calculate the "cold start" draw. Some PTZ cameras spike significantly during initialization, which can cause intermittent reboots if your PoE budget is too tight (even if the "active" draw looks fine). Would love to hear how you guys handle bandwidth management for larger 16-32 channel installs. Any specific switch brands you’ve found to be particularly reliable for 24/7 heavy lifting? Best, Eason
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Ajax seem to be pushing their wares to electricians mostly and probably Ariel fitters.. I've seen Youtube videos by Efix and that Cambridge spark that claims his the biggest and best both promoting them. I think they also had an advert in the electricians trade mag as a spark mate was asking about them.
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Hi and welcome Just be aware this is a UK forum and tech varies from country to country.
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Hi Mark Welcome
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They claimed compliance, but its self certificated which is a bit like your local tyre garage claiming its Ferrari authorised
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Round these parts seems they using it for coms, it a cheaper way to give clients coms , I don't really know much about fire and coms but seems it's about it being cheap
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Check before you fit it self cert doesn't meet g2. If you cert it that's on you
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