Bandwidth questions

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sykotic

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 2, 2003
Messages
154
Ok I know I need to start studying this information and get my CCNA but anyway I have this customer that asked me to do an IP Video system for his plant. I said ok thats fine but anyway I am starting to realize that bandwidth might be an issue.

According to the bandwidth calculator I am using from the surveillance software company, 40 camera's, at 10fps, at 800x600 resolution will use 141mb/sec. His network is completely 10/100.

Here is the design, There are a total of 33 camera's currently but will be adding 7 more later.

8 camera's > 10/100 poe switch > Dell Powerconnect 3448P Switch
8 camera's > 10/100 poe switch > Dell Powerconnect 3448P Switch
4 camera's > 10/100 poe switch > Dell Powerconnect 3448P Switch
4 camera's > 10/100 switch > Dell Powerconnect 3448P Switch
4 camera's > Dell Powerconnect 3448P Switch
5 camera's > 10/100 switch > Dell Powerconnect 3448P Switch

So there will be 9 connections to 10/100 ports on that 3448P. The location of that switch is in the server room where 2 servers also plug into it along with about 8 access points that run off PoE and then a connection from that goes to the main switch in the main office.

Am I correct that I need more bandwidth to run these camera's?

Would putting a gigabit switch in the server room for all the camera's and switchs the camera's use solve my problem?
Do I need to plug that switch directly into a seperate gigabit network card on the camera server?
 
sykotic said:
Am I correct that I need more bandwidth to run these camera's?
Click to expand...

Maybe... it depends what the camera's are sending their pictures to. You have to remember that each port get's a 100Mb connection. So your potential bottlenecks are uplinks from the 10/100 POE switches to the Dell and then then connection from the Dell switch to the image repository (I'm assuming it hangs off of there). What else is plugged into the POE switches? How much data does the calculator say 8 camera's generate, that's the most of the uplink it will use to the Dell switch.

Would putting a gigabit switch in the server room for all the camera's and switchs the camera's use solve my problem?
Click to expand...

It would be a good idea (that's in general anyway). Have your core switching be gigabit to all your servers and have gigabit uplinks between your remote switches and your core. Now that's best practice and assuming you can get the money of course. Reality would dictate that you may want to start by seeing how much bandwidth you're using. Do some monitoring and the various switches and ports (especially the uplinks and the link to the server) and see what your utilization looks like.
 
There is a new server that will be running the surveillance software and recording all the video for every camera in the plant. It will also plug directly into the dell switch. The other ports on the switch(besides the cameras), are used to plug in PoE access points around the plant and also 2 other servers(1 file/sql server, and the other is a fileserver that runs active directory, dns, dhcp, etc..).


Ok, so now that I understand each port supports 100mb, it seems that the bottleneck will be at the server that will be receiving all the video from the camera's because it will be plugged into a 100mb port with a 100mb network card. Since the camera's will be using 141mb/sec, it will be 141% usage there to the server.

This switch has these ports:
Additional 2 Copper GbE ports PLUS 2 optional Fiber GbE via SFP transceivers
Integrated Copper GbE ports provide resilient stacking

I don't suppose there's anyway to use one of these GbE ports to plug the video server in, that way all the data is receiving can be transferred through a GbE port, and then all I need is a gigabit network card on the video server?
 
Or would it be possible to use the GbE port on the 3448p to plug into the stacking port on a gigabit switch, then plug all the servers into the gigabit switch(with gigabit network cards of course).

Is that what you were saying??
 
Yeah, before worrying about the network (but it should be a concern) I'd worry more about your server. Unless you have a raid setup (preferably Raid10), your server will be the limiting factor. Even if you have a gig card in the server, it still can only write as fast as your disks will allow it to.
 
Well the server that will be hosting video is a quad core server with 5TB in a raid5 array. We purchased the server from the company that designs the surveillance software so i'm not worried about the server being up to par(other than the network card). This server is going to be only for video storage, we have 2 other servers to do everything else.
 
sykotic said:
Well the server that will be hosting video is a quad core server with 5TB in a raid5 array. We purchased the server from the company that designs the surveillance software so i'm not worried about the server being up to par(other than the network card). This server is going to be only for video storage, we have 2 other servers to do everything else.
Click to expand...
How many drives in the raid?
 
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