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cat5e, but i think your missing my point.

If you have 50 ip cams then a std switch is going to struggle. I need something a lot more powerful.

no James, i don't miss any point (and dangerous to assume i do ).

i do understand the band width issues and know 50 cams is a lot to handle, advice would depend on the practicalities like where the existing switch is, how much other kit uses bandwidth and so on.

can you locate a new switch into the same location, can you cable all 50 cameras back to this location?

and if so it may well pay you to buy the same switch as already fitted, and then 'back bone' rather than daisy chain from a port or ports.

if you do have to daisy chain then you might need to run into two (or even more) ports, to get the data through put performance required.

Arfur

to problem is not the bandwidth of each camera leg, its the bandwidth when they get to the server leg

to problem is not the bandwidth of each camera leg, its the bandwidth when they get to the server leg

then the best way imo is to have a separate NIC fitted in the server fed direct to and ony the camera switch,

this removes the load required by the ip cams from affecting normal network traffic levels (assuming a fast server).

you are best advised to consult the IT support tech for that site, as if yo feck them off life can get really miserable, and they tend to be 'jealous 'titsy types' as a breed ..

Arfur.

I assume 4 x network adapters on your server?

would dividing the loading on your network by four switches achive anything ?

thats already done, My problem is that on the next phase they want 25fps (ish) per camera on the videowall instead of the 5 ish we are currently running.

My plan is to modify our videwall software and thake those feeds direct of the camera at 20fps, and take an additional stream for the recorders. But 20fps x number of cams is a lot of bandwidth purly for the live display.

I was hoping to use a few fancy swicthes and multi network cards to get this to work.

My own tests on gigqabit networking with std switches has maxed out the link at 28ish meg a second. i need to achieve approx 50meg.

but bear in mind the pci bus can only handle 133 mb /s so there are hard limits eventually

I assume a 10 Gigabit switch before the server would be a waste of space ?

(Yes I had to google!)

It would without a switch that could merge the packets. 10gig ethernet will provide more bandwidth than a std (old stlye) pci bus can handle)

nowing you, you've a bloody good idea what you what before posting here ?