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hedly

Regular Contributor
Hey all,
Work related question.

Looking for a switch with no less than 4 qty, gigabit connections for IP cameras.

Four IP cameras at 1080P using H.264 or H.265 compression.

No wireless. Must be wired connections.

We won't need more than 4 ports for the cameras
- We have space for larger switch if needed.
- But larger than 16 ports might push our space limits

Switch must have SFP for fiber output.

DC power input would simplify the design but could convert to A/C if required.

Unit will be at a remote site so it must be very reliable and last multiple years with no maintenance or replacement.
- Probably one of the biggest requirements is reliability for this application

Passive cooling would be preferred, but not a must.

POE would simplify wiring to cameras, but not a must. We can design/build/power the cameras separately or inject Ethernet with power after the switch (i.e. if POE switch is less reliable than non-POE switch or if DC powered switch negates POE) .

Can be managed or unmanged, but simpler is better IMO.

If the budget were very high (say up to ~$1500.00); what would you recommend?
 
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If you are going to buy a POE+ switch to run cameras why not run your wireless as well? It won't cost you extra. I would look at the Cisco small business switches. They have a lot of them. There is bound to be 1 which will work. Fiber is no problem. The Cisco small business switches have a GUI menu system to make it easier to install.

There is also the Cisco PRO line depending on how important the application is. The Cisco PRO line of switches are loud designed for a wiring closet. These guys are CLI based. You setup with telnet.
 
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If you are going to buy a POE+ switch to run cameras why not run your wireless as well? It won't cost you extra. I would look at the Cisco small business switches. They have a lot of them. There is bound to be 1 which will work. Fiber is no problem. The Cisco small business switches have a GUI menu system to make it easier to install.

There is also the Cisco PRO line depending on how important the application is. The Cisco PRO line of switches are loud designed for a wiring closet. These guys are CLI based. You setup with telnet.

I should have put that in the 'requirement' that we can't do wireless. Must be wired. I'll update my original post to include.
 
no router needed. not connecting to the internet. closed network...kind of. We'll assign static IP addresses to the cameras.
 
@hedly - Sounds like you want an industrial switch, which can take multiple power inputs (but at least DC power in), has DIN rail and wall mounting options and is rated for extended temperature and/or weather conditions. Something like an Allied Telesis IS230-10GP, or similar. The Cisco equivalent would be an IE3000 series. Skip over the SG small business stuff; it's generally not rugged enough.
 
@hedly - Sounds like you want an industrial switch, which can take multiple power inputs (but at least DC power in), has DIN rail and wall mounting options and is rated for extended temperature and/or weather conditions. Something like an Allied Telesis IS230-10GP, or similar. The Cisco equivalent would be an IE3000 series. Skip over the SG small business stuff; it's generally not rugged enough.
@Trip ,
Funny you mentions the Cisco industrial series. After @coxhaus 's reply above I looked up the cisco pro routers and came across the industrial 3000 series. I also looked into the 1000 and 2000 series industrial models. My concern with all these is the complexity of setup. This effort is not a networking effort, per se. Our team has some knowledge of networking, but likely not much more than plugging ethernet cables into a unmanaged switch and then into multiple computers to get them talking to one another. There are a lot of protocols listed that I don't know why we would need them. But those switches are relatively inexpensive so we could purchase one and see if it works out of the box.

Interesting, the Allied Telesis IS130 series are unmanaged. We won't have subnets, VLANs or anything (I think that means we won't need a Layer 3 switch). It's a closed network so we won't need firewalls and such either. Also, the smaller size of these series switchs (both cisco and AT) are better suited for our location.
 
Got it. Another option might be a web-managed but still industrial model, such as a TrendNet TI-PG1284i, which also happens to be a pretty decent price point at well under $1K. Nice thing is you can run it effectively unmanaged out-of-the-box, but managed it fairly easily via the web GUI later on if needed. TrendNet also makes a power supply to go along with it, the TI-S24048, which makes the entire setup fairly plug-and-play as far as wiring goes.
 
It is not a good idea to run cameras on the same VLAN as data on the business VLAN, don't combine them. Plus you are going to want to control internet access for the cameras. It will be much easier in a separate VLAN.

I guess you know there are a lot of fiber standards. You need to match what is coming in both transmit mode, diameter, and frequency.

You may need to hire someone that does this for a living.
 
@Trip , thanks. I'll look into those. Price isn't the driver in this effort.

@coxhaus, thank you for that input. There won't be any other data on this and it won't attach to the internet...ever...ever. It's a closed network. IP cameras will go to the switch then output to fiber. Fiber will be fed to multiplexer to combine other computers/systems data to single strand. The single strand will then go to the head shed some distance away, then de-mux'd. Cameras will be fed into video management system. The VMS will be used to pull the recorded video for viewing. Not sure how we'll combine video and computer/system data so we can see it all together. But, if we want to get data off this network we would use removable storage of some flavor. We've got some guys that have done something like this before, but the difference is the remote location and long-term reliability.
 
Now that I have thought about this I don't see any reason why a Cisco SG350 switch would have any problems handling 4 security cameras. This switch runs in layer 2 unless you turn on layer 3. It is easier than a CLI switch since you won't be able to handle CLI on a PRO series switch. I think it would be tough enough. This switch comes setup for 1 VLAN ready to run out of the box.

If you need 10 gig then a Cisco SG350X switch.
 
Now that I have thought about this I don't see any reason why a Cisco SG350 switch would have any problems handling 4 security cameras. This switch runs in layer 2 unless you turn on layer 3. It is easier than a CLI switch since you won't be able to handle CLI on a PRO series switch. I think it would be tough enough. This switch comes setup for 1 VLAN ready to run out of the box.

If you need 10 gig then a Cisco SG350X switch.

Except that the industrial ones can take DC power.

One more question. The SFP modules. How do you find their max speed? If you're using a fiber SFP module, will it run only at 1Gig, or will it run at full fiber speed? I was reviewing the models you recommended as well as comparing to the industrial models and I can't seem to find a way to compare the capabilities of the SFP ports. It looks like the industrial models only have gigabit speeds on their SFP and I suspect that might be a bit slow with the video feeds going up the pipe unless we use higher compression on the cameras to reduce the data.
 
The fiber modules run at what you buy that is why I said they need to match across the board. That is why I posted the SG350X switch. We used to run some fiber at 1 gig 25 years ago but I would think you would use all 10 gig now. You understand the light needs to match as well LED or laser. Don't forget glass diameter and frequency, wave length.

I would think 4 cameras would work in 1 gig fine. But if your fiber is 10 gig then the switch needs to support 10 gig.
 
The fiber modules run at what you buy that is why I said they need to match across the board. That is why I posted the SG350X switch. We used to run some fiber at 1 gig 25 years ago but I would think you would use all 10 gig now. You understand the light needs to match as well LED or laser. Don't forget glass diameter and frequency, wave length.

I would think 4 cameras would work in 1 gig fine. But if your fiber is 10 gig then the switch needs to support 10 gig.
Thanks again. I belive that the main trunk line that we're connecting to is 10G. That's set and we can't change it, so we'll be matching the link out of the MUX to that. one of my guys already ran a link budget analysis for that long run and we've got plenty of headroom. The internals...they will all be short runs. We'll figure that out.

I'm trying to get smart on this so that when someone says, "What d'ya think," I don't look at them like a mule deer in the head lights. I'd rather them recommend solutions and provide the reasoning, but it's been a little tough with a new group and trying to get them to know that I trust them.

Much obliged.
 
Hey all, I know it's been a few weeks since this thread was active, but I'm back in the hunt again. It seems most of the switches out there have 1G limits on the SFP modules...unless you get to something with lots of ports. Our issue is space and we won't have room for a 24-port switch (well at least the normal, long rack type).

Does anyone have any familiarity with these:
https://www.antaira.com/products/Unmanaged-10-gigabit-PoE/LNP-1002G-10G-SFP

The Micrtik looks interesting:
https://mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in#fndtn-downloads
Looks like it's passively cooled as well.

The Cisco 3000 series switches will work. They're bigger but square instead of the usual long rack type switches. The only thing I'm a little intimidated by is configuring them since they are managed switches. But I think we could get one of the networking folks on the project to tackle that. Worst case we contract it out to the right party. Maybe @sfx2000 would be interested since we're in the same neck of the woods.
 
I am not sure where you got Cisco 3000 switches. I found a cheaper 10 gig Cisco switch. Take a look at the SG250X-24 switches. They are not command line switches you use a GUI. Actually they will run out of the box they way they are setup for a simple network. You just add your fiber module. They run $400 to $600 on eBay right now. I don't think they are a lot more if you buy them from a Cisco Partner. These are Cisco small business switches. They are going to handle 4 video streams fine.

The Cisco 3000 switches are real enterprise level switches and yes you would need to set them up with command line.

I ran my daughter's small business IP phone system using 19 IP phones using one of these Cisco small business switches. Voice systems are way more sensitive to latency than video.
 
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@hedly - So, just to confirm, instead of the originally-spec'd SFP (1Gb) uplinks, you're now looking for SFP+ (10Gb) uplinks?

If so, there certainly are options in the same form factor. Take the Planet IGS-6325-8UP2S2X for instance: two SFP+ uplinks, eight 1-Gig access ports, 802.3bt PoE on all access ports, fully managed L3. <$1K. Planet is pretty legit in the rugged ethernet space, especially in Taiwan. If you have other brand biases, I'm sure I could find more options for you.
 

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