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Ryan Niggeling

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IP Camera choppy and slow

I have a Vivotek camera system installed at my location. We are running the ST7501 software on a computer dedicated to be the camera server. I currently have 29 cameras all running on the system. Now all my cameras are working and coming up on my client's machines around my location. My issue is that the cameras are choppy and almost seem to freeze for a second at times. I have gone through and set the bitrate to 2 mbps and the frame rate to 15 on all the cameras like is recommended by Vivotek. If anyone could give me a suggestion on how to make the cameras run smooth on my computers. I have been told that multicast might solve the issue but not sure on that. I did use a Sonicwall tz105 to separate my network into a 192.168.1.1 network for all my computers and then a 10.0.0.1 network that all the cameras are going running on. Separating the two network seemed to help the situation but has not fully resolved the issue.
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masnrock
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What type of switches areally you using for the cameras? I am assuming that your cameras are POE. You might need to update the firmware or consider upgrading the switch itself.
You created two different IP subnets.  How are the subnets separated?

That is, are you using VLAN's or separate switches?

Is the server on the same network as the cameras?

At 2 Mbps for 29 cameras, that is almost 60 Mbps.   What is the LAN speed of your network?

Does the camera traffic have to pass through the Sonicwall tz105 to get from the cameras to the server?

What resolution are you recording at?
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Ryan Niggeling

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We are not using VLAN's, one router 2 separate networks,  port  #1 is 192.x.x.1 port #2 is 10.x.x.1, all the cameras are on a separate switch (dell) that switch connects to the router in port #2, there is a bridge between the 2 networks because one of the camera viewing stations has some software that makes that PC have to stay (so we believe) on the 192.x.x.1 network, there for the need for the bridge. Most cameras are set to 1280X960 resolution, some cameras have audio and that's the main concern here since our costumer relies on that audio. The server is on the same network as the cameras, the traffic from the cameras does not have to go through the router to get to the server, at this point all the traffic from the cameras has to go through the router to the viewing clients, the computer are on a separate switch that connects to port #1 192.x.x.1.
one more thing the switches that were installed are Dell brand and we cannot tell if the are Gigabit switches or not, it might be safe to assume that they are only 10/100. If that's the case would a Gig switch help?
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giltjr
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You will need a sufficiently powerfull router to keep a 60+Mbps sustained volume through it. Many small DSL routers are not doing that.
If the networks should be separated, then add a 1Gbps network card to the viewer/server PC and connect that to the video switch, connect the existing adapter other  network .