Hey,
I manage a network at an outdoor restaurant we have a single subnet with a ton of devices. We have occasional gremlins and I am trying to figure out why. It's not terrible, but there's issues with reliability now and then - mostly latency issues (I think) which usually get noticed when trying to do important things like process credit cards.
I have a few questions about what we can do to improve performance.
The owner is a vehement DIY-er so he's unlikely to hire someone who actually trained for what I'm doing. I am not a trained network technician, I have just picked up what I know from doing my own projects in homelab and installing equipment for end users. I'm not terrible, but there are some definite holes in my knowledge am hoping other people would help me with. One is VLANs, the other is setting up additional NAT within the LAN for additional subnets.
I have a feeling one, the other, or both might help with the restaurant traffic, but I'm not entirely sure, so I thought I'd ask you nice people if my inklings have any shred of relevancy.
So here's the questions:
1) Big picture: Is having a ton of devices constantly communicating on a single lan segment going to cause collisions, higher latency, etc? The restaurant owner loves his IP cams, so there is constant streaming of about 50 devices, all day, all night. The DHCP range of about 130 addresses is nearly full during peak hours with all the employee's phones, etc.
2) If having all the traffic on a single subnet can cause latency issues, would moving them into a different address space or isolating them with VLAN tags benefit traffic for other devices in any meaningful way? Like, is there a good argument to be concerned about packet collisions, or do we just need greater bandwidth?
3) If the number of devices on a single subnet IS worth being concerned about, how would you recommend I isolate traffic? Would VLAN tagging help if they're still all on the same subnet, or should I NAT different types of traffic? Some other method I am not thinking of?
More about the environment:
All 1Gbps
Mostly Unifi equipment
7 WIFI APs - 4 are dual band, 3 are 2.4GHz only (wireless N) - various Unifi models
Gateway is a Gen1 Unifi Security Gateway
Switches: Started w/ 8 port Unifi switch, have added a Cisco SG110-16P directly after it, and there's a couple cheap 5-port switches near end points at various places on the property for the devices in close proximity
At least 8 Ring cameras (all 2.4GHz)
At least 30 Wyse cameras (all 2.4GHz)
3 Dahua IP cams about 150 ft from the gateway (POE)
A 32 Channel analog security DVR that doesn't use bandwidth for cameras, but people off site watch on their phones, computers, etc.
Oh, and most importantly, 7 credit card machines - 3 of which are handhelds so have to use WIFI
Thanks!
I manage a network at an outdoor restaurant we have a single subnet with a ton of devices. We have occasional gremlins and I am trying to figure out why. It's not terrible, but there's issues with reliability now and then - mostly latency issues (I think) which usually get noticed when trying to do important things like process credit cards.
I have a few questions about what we can do to improve performance.
The owner is a vehement DIY-er so he's unlikely to hire someone who actually trained for what I'm doing. I am not a trained network technician, I have just picked up what I know from doing my own projects in homelab and installing equipment for end users. I'm not terrible, but there are some definite holes in my knowledge am hoping other people would help me with. One is VLANs, the other is setting up additional NAT within the LAN for additional subnets.
I have a feeling one, the other, or both might help with the restaurant traffic, but I'm not entirely sure, so I thought I'd ask you nice people if my inklings have any shred of relevancy.
So here's the questions:
1) Big picture: Is having a ton of devices constantly communicating on a single lan segment going to cause collisions, higher latency, etc? The restaurant owner loves his IP cams, so there is constant streaming of about 50 devices, all day, all night. The DHCP range of about 130 addresses is nearly full during peak hours with all the employee's phones, etc.
2) If having all the traffic on a single subnet can cause latency issues, would moving them into a different address space or isolating them with VLAN tags benefit traffic for other devices in any meaningful way? Like, is there a good argument to be concerned about packet collisions, or do we just need greater bandwidth?
3) If the number of devices on a single subnet IS worth being concerned about, how would you recommend I isolate traffic? Would VLAN tagging help if they're still all on the same subnet, or should I NAT different types of traffic? Some other method I am not thinking of?
More about the environment:
All 1Gbps
Mostly Unifi equipment
7 WIFI APs - 4 are dual band, 3 are 2.4GHz only (wireless N) - various Unifi models
Gateway is a Gen1 Unifi Security Gateway
Switches: Started w/ 8 port Unifi switch, have added a Cisco SG110-16P directly after it, and there's a couple cheap 5-port switches near end points at various places on the property for the devices in close proximity
At least 8 Ring cameras (all 2.4GHz)
At least 30 Wyse cameras (all 2.4GHz)
3 Dahua IP cams about 150 ft from the gateway (POE)
A 32 Channel analog security DVR that doesn't use bandwidth for cameras, but people off site watch on their phones, computers, etc.
Oh, and most importantly, 7 credit card machines - 3 of which are handhelds so have to use WIFI
Thanks!