How do the ring camera's communicate across my network

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#1

I had a number of opportunities dealing with the support community at Ring (Amazon) and have generally had good experiences, until recently. I’ve installed at minimum 4 wired camera’s (not to be confused with the confusing elite camera) at my place and they are all connected via Cat 6 ethernet into a POE switch. I’ve been trying to get the ring support team to come clean about the communication of these devices across an LAN at a customers home and I’ve used my own experience to illustrate. My topology: AT&T 1Gb Internet connection; Google wifi (3 puck) authorized passthrough to the ATT Router; two switches connected (24 port PoE) (48 Port Managed Linsys w/sfp) - All cameras, to include NVR are connected to the PoE; All other LAN traffic via 48 port; PoE is uplinked to 48 port .

Where is the traffic from the LAN connected ring cam’s ? My first thought was that it should be identified on the PoE, however, I’m only seeing power supplied by the PoE and that traffic is minimum. However, coming across the Google wifi, I see all of the ring cam’s and all of the traffic, WHY?

Is this the reason for replacing the Wired cam’s with the PoE Elite that has the PoE injector ? Is the current wired cam’s not pushing data across the ethernet port ? By adding a PoE injector with the Elite camera, are you able to drive data via the ethernet ? Why not recommend the use of a PoE switch and re-route traffic via L2 ?

Does any of you all have additional questions ?

#2

The only thing I can tell you is I have four Ring POE cameras, and power and data are traveling on the ethernet cable. I do use individual POE injectors to faciliiate trouble shooting and to eliminate one single point of failure (POE switch), but that does not matter. The cameras are not on my wifi (I can see on my network monitor where they are). So maybe you set the cameras up as wifi? I know I had that option during setup, pick ethernet or wifi communication.

#3

Hey Brad,

Thank you for your input. I did not think of that, but this past weekend I reset my google mesh network to factory setting as I was seeing some serious anomolies with DHCP and I had to re-establish connectivity for my cams across the house. Funny thing is, I set each and every one up as “PoE” and “Ethernet” - options available upon setup. Now here is the funny thing. The Ring Doorbell and Floodlight are both “wifi” no other option, however, when I look at the settings of each, they all show the wifi simbol as their connection type. So I’m not sure how or why they are showing up as wifi. But I can tell you, I don’t see any ethernet traffic. Now that I’ve reset my entire network to factory, wow, speeds are incredible, including the wifi traffic. Therefore, its not a big deal that the traffic is over wifi as it takes a milisecond to stream live video external to my home with the cams showing wifi. I only wanted to see the cam’s on my LAN vs. wifi. Have you been able to sniff the traffic for your devices ?

#4

There is a bug in the Ring app, even though your camera may be connected via ehternet, the app shows the wifi image. I have reported this bug, but as if yet it has not been fixed.

Yes, I can confirm that my POE cameras are connected via ethernet, they are not on my wifi. You can also see this on the app by doing a “device health” check on the camera, where you can see the connection being used.

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#5

For those of you that have Ring Video Elite (POE?). Can you pick up the video image on an NVR? I can’t find this anywhere. If you can pick up video on an NVR, can this be used to store video locally?

#6

Hey there PMM1 - you are kidding right! I mean, if they allowed you to store that video locally, that would take away the control they have to build this so called protected liberal community. Now you wouldn’t want to disturb the force would you ?

I’ve been using ring cam’s wired (connected to a POE and $100 cheaper than the so call elite, which allowed me to directly plug the internet port into a POE switch, no injector required) since they came on the market - slowly migrated my devices to the Unifi UNVR and camer’s plus doorbell and am much happier with local storage and cloud access.

take your data into your own hands and switch