1

Hello. It would be interesting to know what are the pros and cons connecting network cameras via POe switch vs. connecting them directly to the NVR?
By the first method, only POE switch will connect to the NVR, and in theory, it should be able to see all the cameras.

Thanks

23 Spice ups
2

Firstly, it all really depends…

  1. Does your NVR have POE ?

  2. Does your NVR have enough NIC ports to support the number of Cams you want installed ?

  3. Does each Cam location have AC power source ?

There are always 3 sides to every coin…in many cases, if possible, you may want to reduce the number of appliances to reduce points of failure…like using direct AC power source and also plugging LAN directly into the NVR or DVR. But using POE, you would have lesser cables like not requiring to run power cables to the cams and needing AC power adapters or power injectors (cams usually use 5V or 12V only).

4 Spice ups
3

  1. Does your NVR have POE ?
    Yes

  2. Does your NVR have enough NIC ports to support the number of Cams you want installed ?
    No, thats why Im thinking instead of a new NVR with more nics I will use my PoE switch.

  3. Does each Cam location have AC power source ?
    No, thats why I use NVR with PoE now.

My main concern is if I will have same NVR features if I connect my cameras to PoE switch first, and after to NVR?

4

The POE ports on your NVR are likely just bridged ports making it roughly equivalent to a switch. Factors to consider include how far (DC voltage drop over long cables can be a problem) the cable runs are between cams/nvr, as well as how many ports the NVR has vs how many cams you need. Either way you should get the same functionality

2 Spice ups
5

BTW, you may need to “quote post” so that I will get a notification…

As mentioned by Joel, that you may need to also consider other factors like distance if you intend to use POE and/or even the required voltage of the Cams.

Logically, if all the factors or requirements are met, there should not be any features loss as POE is basically LAN with power.

6

Also depends on the cable run length, can you get all the cameras within the 100m max cable length?

7

It might be better to have a POE switch in between the cameras and the DVR. My reasoning is that the switch would be sacrificial in the case of a surge coming back to the host. You’d blow the switch instead of the whole DVR. Not sure if it is applicable where you are, but if you’re in a lightning prone area, this is a consideration.

Functionally, either model would work the same otherwise, provided that the POE from the DVR is sufficient for your cameras. If you’ve got a number of PTZs, the DVR output may not be enough.

Good luck !

1 Spice up
8

Good Morning,

In our design we have about 5 sites, each site has anywhere from 1-5 NVR’s (Some locations have alot more cameras than others).

Each NVR typically will only hold around 50 cameras before it gets angry. The storage capacity cant handle much more than that.

We connect out NVR’s to our main switches with specific Vlans and use PoE edge switches on the same vlans to actually plug in the cameras.

This helps keep things organized.

Keep in mind having PoE edge switches can help when you are working with different PoE voltage cameras.

Not all switches provide the right amount of voltage and if you directly plug the cameras into a switch that doesn’t support it you will need to use PoE injectors.

I hope this helps you out.

2 Spice ups
9

Yes, you should have the same NVR functionality regardless of weather a camera is plugged directly into it, or plugged into a switched that’s plugged directly into it.

You’ll only run into issues if you have a lot of cameras feeding through that one NVR ↔ Switch cable such that you’ve used up all the cable bandwidth. But if you’re currently plugging cameras directly into an NVR, that’s probably not your situation.

2 Spice ups
10
  1. Some consumer-grade NVR’s have sufficient PoE ports to support the number of cameras that the device is licensed for. Do you have sufficient licensing to connect all the cameras in your upgrade?

If camera licensing is not an issue, there is no problem having your cameras connect to a PoE switch, and trunk that switch to the NVR appliance, unless the amount of network traffic from cameras on that switch start to saturate the one link to the NVR.

11

Biggest advantage to a PoE switch is the distance from the NVR you can put the camera. If you have a camera in a different building, then you need another NVR in that building.

1 Spice up
12

Also, maybe, fault isolation, say you get a near lightning strike and have long network cable runs, maybe it fries the switch ,

which you can just swap out, instead of the NVR which has data on it that you now can’t get to because it’s nic interface is fried…

Keep in mind also, NVR with internal storage might not be able to handle more cameras than it has ports for just because of storage layout and speed…

(but some can, so, depends)

2 Spice ups
13

I’ve had both setups. It depends on your NVR and cameras in some instances. I’ve had situations where a camera would freeze and the only way to restart it was to power cycle it. I could easily shut the port off and back on to resolve those issues. I doubt a NVR is capable of that, or at least the one’s I’ve worked with have been pretty basic. I prefer using switches, and my new NVRs forced me into that because they only have 2 ports. As others have said, watch your bandwidth. A lot of these NVRs can only support 30-40 cameras, and you are likely to bottleneck between the switch and the NVR if you go higher.

2 Spice ups
14

We did something similar with our NVR, we had a 8 channel NVR with POE ports, and the POE part of the ports died. I found we could just use a POE switch plug the 8 camera drops into the switch and the switch into one of the camera ports on the NVR. We thought maybe we could add more than 8 cameras to our NVR. But we could not since the NVR was capped at 8 channels and that NVR model could not support more than 8 channels.

Depending on your NVR you will be capped on the number of cameras based on how many channels the NVR can support.

15

The PROS to having an integrated POE switch in your NVR.

  1. One less piece of equipment to rack. Can also be one less power cable needed, as usually both NVR and switch use the one power supply for both.

  2. Usually an NVR with (x) number of POE ports has licenses for the same (x) number of cameras, so you don’t have to worry about procuring more licenses. Sometimes an NVR will let you go beyond the number of cameras that there are ports for by daisy chaining another switch, but you may have to buy camera licenses at that point. But then you might run into issues where the NVR may not be powerful enough to support all those cameras. To save costs, most NVR’s with built in switches have processing capacity scaled down to just what it needs and not much more beyond that.

  3. Usually the NVR has a way to bounce (power cycle) individual ports to reset cameras included in the NVR management interface. So no need to go to a separate switch interface.

  4. The built in switch often has a DHCP server that remembers MAC addresses, so configuring cameras with IP’s is usually easier.

The CONS to having an integrated POE switch in your NVR.

  1. Being just one unit, they are often not modular so if one portion, the switch or the NVR goes bad, you have to throw out the whole thing.

  2. Often the built in switch is only 802.3af (15W) capable. If the camera needs more power, you have to uplink another switch or midspan. If they are 802.3at (30W) capable, often it only has a power budget for a few 30W cameras. These are often cheap budget components.

  3. Having the heat from the POE switch inside an already hot computer (NVR) can shorten its lifespan.

  4. The price difference between an NVR without built in switch and a separate POE switch, compared to an NVR with built in switch, is often not much more. That’s why you see less and less of them with built in switches these days. Having the switch as a sperate component just gives you more choices.

Personally, I don’t see the point of having an NVR with built in switch unless you have a large rollout of these where the little bit of money savings and labor setup makes a difference, which again is why I see a lot less of these types of NVR’s than there were 10 or 14 years ago. And I like using my own switches that I know I can depend on.

As to people voicing concerns about cable distance, I don’t know what that means. Every NVR I’ve seen with built in POE switches claim to follow basic Ethernet and 802.3af or 802.3at standards. So that means maximum supported cable length of 100 meters. Period. If anything, many people have found that POE cameras on cables past 100 meters sometimes still power up even past a point where reliable network communication occurs. So more likely the communication with the camera will not work than the camera not powering up if you go past 100 meter specifications.

16

I always agree with Luis C.

As a manufacturer we never supplied inbuilt POE, we have moved to I-POE in the past couple of years.

Most manufacturers do not allow access to the cameras via I-POE, so if you want to manually set parameters on the cameras, it must be supported by the NVR (often ruling out 3rd Party or Onvif cameras).
Controlling the hardware architecture, of adding an external switch, is always a bonus (especially if you’re a Cisco expert or similar). NVR’s don’t support multicasting well etc… You get all the advanced features of a switch as pointed out by phanatic.
Personally I have always hated DHCP, performed by an NVR, to a random address of its choosing. I much prefer setting my own IP choices, pushing you to external switch.
As does extending the connection i.e. daisy chaining a camera onto another switch.
Switches die far less often than I-POE & I always like my networking & facing devices on mains power, rather than 48v switching power supply or similar.
Depending where the NVR is mounted can also make your cabling very messy, instead of having one cable from rack to NVR.

1 Spice up
17

In the end it really matters if you’ll be doing pro-consumer or commercial equipment. The prosumer brands like Reo, Swann etc.

18

Stick them into a switch then you can monitor them directly if required.

1 Spice up
19

We just recently started using these ubiquiti ethernet surge protectors for some pole mounted equipment. Ethernet Surge Protector - Ubiquiti Store United States

Haven’t had a lightening strike knocks on wood but it could also be another line of defense between an outdoor camera and/or your switches/NVR. Please note I would not use this as a replacement for proper grounding of poles/equipment. While this device itself can be grounded I would also suggest grounding any mounting poles or devices that don’t have solid cover above them! P.S. I’m not an electrician or your electric code so don’t take this as law either.

1 Spice up
20

+1 for POE switches

1 Spice up