Ethernet and CCTV together - 1 switch ?

Hi All

I am getting a loft conversion and have decided to use this opportunity to wire up both CCTV cameras which use powered Ethernet which will go to a recorder box or possibly cloud recording and some wired Ethernet ports. I think these will need to all go through a switch or a network panel of some kind.
CAT 5e is fine for my needs so I will use this.

Can anyone recommend a switch that would be suitable for both purposes ?

Thanks
J

I'd recommend taking a look at Hikvisions range, the cameras are excellent value for money. Within their range they have their NVRs which provide a PoE switch at the back. These can be installed with your regular 3.5" HDDs and simply plug and play with the cameras.

Simply all you will need is a NVR, cameras and that's it. Just a single Cat5e cable to the relevant location.

Some NVRs have a built in PoE switch, so it may be worth considering one of these.

Thanks for the replies

Yes the Hikvisions look excellent and I do want to use the current generation kit for this. So the cameras go to the NVR box (recorder + power for the cameras) and this hooks up to a general purpose ethernet switch with the other ethernet cables ?

abcabcabc said:

Thanks for the replies

Yes the Hikvisions look excellent and I do want to use the current generation kit for this. So the cameras go to the NVR box (recorder + power for the cameras) and this hooks up to a general purpose ethernet switch with the other ethernet cables ?

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You may be able to kill two birds with one stone, which was my point in the previous post. Get an NVR with enough ports and just hook everything up to it. I've seen 8 port ones for sure. How many non-camera ports do you need?

Hi

Maybe 20 ethernet ports around the house and 4 cameras. I'm going to take advantage of the floorboards coming up to wire these up along with loads more power sockets as I have nothing like enough at the moment. I can see more and more networked devices coming along in the future.

Definitely pull in more than you think you'll need cable is soooo cheap. I'd look to go Cat6 for the uplift cost purely due to PoE becoming more and more used.

I'd recommend bringing them all back to a central location, this is generally a loft area, it may even be worth relocating your phone line to the same area or simply run a couple of Cat6 cables to the loft area from the router. From this you'd be best terminating them onto a patch panel and then either mounting this in a cabinet or leaving it loose.
You'll then be best to install a Hikvision NVR with PoE built in and a non-PoE switch for your general networked devices.


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Hikvision NVRs which have a switch built in will also have a DHCP server built in, this can be utilised and by default it will hand out IP addresses in a different subnet to your home network, this is useful to avoid double NAT but also so you don't end up with duplicate IP addresses. For this reason, don't plug non-camera devices into the back of it.

It's also worth me mentioning that according to my suppliers, Hikvision are having a price increase at the back end of this month. However this could just be my suppliers after orders

At the distances involved in a domestic install I wouldn't be worrying about the difference between Cat5e and Cat6 for PoE. A lot of the Cat6 cable out there is 24AWG (the same as Cat5e) anyway.

bremen1874 said:

At the distances involved in a domestic install I wouldn't be worrying about the difference between Cat5e and Cat6 for PoE. A lot of the Cat6 cable out there is 24AWG (the same as Cat5e) anyway.

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I'm not to 'down' on domesitc costs but I know I can buy Cat6 for a few quid more per 1000ft. Using a quality manufacturer like Excel will ensure the Cat6 is 23AWG, the runs in a domestic installation will also net 10GigE and as OP seems to be going through the trouble of doing this, he probably doesn't plan on moving soon. When lifting floor boards etc you may as well make it as future proof as possible and for the small uplift cost it's worth the gains, Cat6a however is not.

I only left the comment because your post implied that Cat6 was necessary for PoE. And even if you don't read that into it you made no mention of why you might prefer Cat6 over Cat5e for PoE.

There are plenty of factors to consider when choosing between Cat5e and Cat6 for an install. Domestically where a long cable run isn't going to often exceed 30m PoE isn't a significant one.

bremen1874 said:

I only left the comment because your post implied that Cat6 was necessary for PoE. And even if you don't read that into it you made no mention of why you might prefer Cat6 over Cat5e for PoE.

There are plenty of factors to consider when choosing between Cat5e and Cat6 for an install. Domestically where a long cable run isn't going to often exceed 30m PoE isn't a significant one.

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Cat6 with the separator between the pairs has been proven to dramatically reduce the heat of a cable when carrying high loads, which with the look for these loads to be increased (talks of up to 100W running through it) it makes sense. Again I'm not 100% sure on what you are able to buy Cat5e v Cat6 for but I'm talking a couple of quid. If we're looking at say £50 a drum extra, no it's probably not worth it.

However how many times does OP want to lift his floor boards? Just remember with every lift they only get squeakier.

High loads? We're talking about a few watts down a 24awg cable. It's not going to heat up noticeable.