I can stream via WiFi on my phone but not via a pc “directly” wired. Why might this be?

My setup is as follows:
I have a Deco mesh network. I also have some ip cameras that I’ve plugged into powerline extenders and then one of the powerlines is plugged into one of the decos to link into the network. With me so far..

Recently I got a 4K camera and I can view it on my phone but the pc (plugged into a deco) won’t stream it. I’m guessing because the av1000s aren’t giving enough band width but what’s odd is it does stream on my phone using WiFi (decos WiFi) – at 6000kbps which is less than 4k I think so maybe the phone is just able to throttle back the resolution but blue iris can’t(the option to change resolution is greyed out) or could something else be going on?

What’s the pc plugged into? If it’s plugged into the router and the mesh network is generating its own ip addresses, then they’re on different subnets so can’t see each other

The PC Is either WiFi to the deco or plugged into another deco on the network.

The pc does display the camera image sometimes but no streaming Happens.

^ Certainly worth a quick check of the IP address allocated on phone compared to the PC

Edit: could you plug the PC and camera into the same network device at all just to see what happens connectivity wise?

I just checked and The ip address is the same

If I plug cameras into an old router (vr400) and then connect the pc to the router, which in turn is connected to the WiFi as a bridge, will that make the connections wired as far as the pc to camera is concerned?

With me so far..

No, it sounds like a hot mess. Why do you have a mesh network and powerline adapters? What’s actually connecting to what, where and how? Can you connect to the cameras but not stream, or not connect at all? Can you ping them? Traceroute? How is your ISP’s router configured, have you got dual NAT going on? Do your cameras operate locally or do they go out to the Internet and back in again?

I just checked and The ip address is the same

If that’s true then that’s why it doesn’t work, IP addresses need to be unique. By “same” do you mean “same subnet”?

If I plug cameras into an old router (vr400) and then connect the pc to the router, which in turn is connected to the WiFi as a bridge, will that make the connections wired as far as the pc to camera is concerned?

I have absolutely no clue but I rather expect that making your configuration even more weirdly complicated isn’t likely to be a positive diagnostic step.

i’d do a bandwidth test off both devices to the internet. if its similar on both its not likely to be a networking issue, maybe the PC just doesn’t have enough umph to run 4k?

What is running your DHCP server? Deco, Powerline adapters or ISP supplied router/modem? Your network should only have one DHCP server running. (This allocates IP addresses within the home network). Also check that you have sufficient addresses available to be allocated around the network (default is 254 but if you’ve tweaked things you may have used them all up).

My home network is deco plugged into the ISP (vodafone) vdsl modem/router with the WiFi turned off.

I got some ip cameras (not WiFi) so I was using power line adapters to be able to put them up without needing to run cat5 cable everywhere.

I access the camera using an IP address on my PC on the network but my phone is using the app, so is getting the feed from the Internet.

What oompah do you need for 4k video stream- it’s a laptop i5 8265 with 8gb ram graphics is Intel uhd 620 I think.

ISP routers tend to be low spec bags o’shite! If you want a proper mesh n/w to extend coverage/eliminate weak spots then invest in a proper mesh router.Extenders like a tplink av1000 with a Deco are not an optimal solution and if you check the down/uplink speed with to your router with the tp plc app on your PC – you’re likely to see a lower speed than tplink say their devices are capable of – running speed tests fast com, oopla or btw from phone connected via WiFi and your pc should give you an idea of your speed and available bandwidth.

4k over home plugs is not the best idea tbh. I’d rip it all out and start from scratch isp router not pushing out wifi

I access the camera using an IP address on my PC on the network but my phone is using the app, so is getting the feed from the Internet.

Try using the direct via the IP address method on the phone. I suspect using this method is too much for the powerline.

Can you reduce the resolution in the camera configuration?

So camera wired into a switch and then the switch wired to the pc with the switch also wired to a Deco. Would that work to be able to record the stream without losses over wireless. I realise the WiFi connection to the net then might not let it stream remotely.

Is there a wireless solution that gives good data up and down load?

I access the camera using an IP address on my PC on the network but my phone is using the app, so is getting the feed from the Internet.

Does it? Does anything change if you turn your ISP’s router off?

Again: if you want to diagnose this then you first need to define it. What are your addresses?

Again again: stop proposing adding yet more hardware until you’ve worked out what’s going on.

Sounds like blue iris transcodes the video streams and uses a lot of cpu on the pc hosting the CCTV setup. Is the laptop running the blue iris SW? Is the mobile getting is video feed from the blue iris SW or direct from the cameras?

As the 4k camera is the only one causing problems, eliminate network addressing from your concerns by connecting an hd camera via the networking connectivity of the 4k camera.

Powerline adaptors are generally “media converters” and don’t give a damn about IP addressing except for some management functions.

Powerline networking doesn’t scale, so the more you have the worse it works. Overall, a powerline strategy is poor when there is traffic from many nodes as the adaptors need to negotiate to resolve collisions on the common cabling. IP addressing clashes and mismatched subnets should be eliminated as a possibility but I’d not jump to the conclusion they exist.

Ta all. I don’t think that the IP addresses is an issue as I can connect to the camera it’s just unreliable. So I think it’s more of a network and/or laptop speed issue.

I must confess I had naively thought that I could get a cheapish pc to act as an NVR and this would then automatically back up to windows cloud but actually maybe the specific 4k NVR is a better option and not necessarily more expensive than the spec pc needed to run several 4k cameras.

How do I eliminate the network speed issue – Hardwire pc to switch and switch to cameras? If the IP addresses are unchanged will that work or will it still be sending the camera data back round the old network somehow and back to the pc

What switch?

How do you know there’s a network speed issue? Whereabouts is it?

You haven’t clearly explained what you have, you haven’t taken any diagnostic steps, and you haven’t answered many of the questions posed on here. You’re working on pure guesswork and by extension so is everyone else.

As a random example: you say you’re using “the app” on the phone. What app? How is this different from the PC?

@cougar thanks for taking the time to reply.

The camera is a reolink 4k one, so the app on my phone is the reolink one.
The PC is running blue iris.

I think there is some sort of network issue since if I plug the camera into a deco then it did work on my PC albeit not great. If I used a powerline then it didn’t work on my pc at all. Both worked on the phone with not masses of difference.

the phone says it’s streaming at 8000kbps which I think is a touch slow for 4k, so that makes me think maybe network not fast enough, but the phone is only wifi so can’t hard wire that.

So that’s why think my problem is either; i) PC too slow to stream 4k or ii) network too slow. but I might be doing something else wrong.

I don’t use the ISP router for network as far as I’m aware, it’s just a modem as I turned the wifi off on it. It’s the deco or powerline that does the network.

I’m not sure how I take diagnostic steps.

I think there is some sort of network issue since if I plug the camera into a deco then it did work on my PC albeit not great. If I used a powerline then it didn’t work on my pc at all.

Right, this is good. How are all these things connected back to the LAN / outside world? Do you have a powerline endpoint and a mesh node both wired directly into your ISP router, or something else?

My experience with powerline adaptors is limited (and largely unfavourable), but my understanding is that they work in pairs. Am I wrong here, or have you got a big pile of them next to a switch / router somewhere?

the phone says it’s streaming at 8000kbps which I think is a touch slow for 4k,

It’s not a touch slow, you want another zero on that for 4k (IIRC I think 25Mbps is the minimum and more is better to allow for overheads / other traffic?). It’s surely transcoding, which might be your problem if the PC isn’t / can’t.

Does this perform any differently? https://support.reolink.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016149853-Install-Reolink-Client-Windows-

I don’t use the ISP router for network as far as I’m aware, it’s just a modem as I turned the wifi off on it. It’s the deco or powerline that does the network.

So you’ve no Wi-Fi on the router, OK. What’s plugged into what, explain your topology.

(Again) what happens if you switch off the ISP router? Does anything break?

I’d put everything in the same room with as little bits as possible and get that working. Then add whatever else you need for the final set up, eg power line plugs, but again in the same room just to make debugging easier. Add bits only when you have a working system.

The router /modem is plugged into a deco. There are 2 other decos that give a mesh around the house. Backhaul is wireless (wish I’d thought about networking when rooms were redecorated a short while ago!!)

The powerlines were added for the sole purpose of a wired connection to camera. they connect to the network via a deco. So one powerline plugged into deco to give the link to the network and others on the cameras. I wasn’t intending to have a deco next to the NVR device but did so to try and see what was going on.

If a do a BTW speedtest on the pc it gives me 37Mbps down and 2.4 up (so this is Deco wifi and then whatever the ISP provides but implies the deco is giving at least 25Mbps I think)

I’ll switch of the router tonight, otherwise somebody else in the house might break something…

So I installed the reolink window client, it’s not as whizzy as blueiris but the camera seems to work fine using it. @cougar, thank you!

So either the pc can’t cope with blue iris or I haven’t got the settings right on blue iris to make it work. I did try changing the hardware decode and direct to disc record but no joy.

In the reolink client I notice that the max stream is on option with 8000 or so kbps being the highest option, the max framerate is 25 so perhaps that’s why lower than a movie.

Right. So either it’s not a network issue, or it is a network issue but the Reolink can transcode down when the Blue Iris can’t. If it’s the latter then you’re on your own with that, I’m no idea! Might be worth logging a support ticket at that point.

Can you move the camera temporarily? Take it off the powerlines and jam it straight into a Deco node or into the router?

The fundamental problem you have here is there is a raft of variables. Cables, Wi-Fi, cellular data, mesh systems, powerlines, the ISP router… Troubleshooting 101 in this sort of environment is seeing how much of it you can get rid of. The more you can rule out, the simpler it becomes. As soon as you change something and it starts working, you have your answer, you then need to work backwards from that.

Aside: it’s a 4k camera. Do you have any 4k screens with which to view that footage?

Do you have settings on the camera where you can step it down?

So one powerline plugged into deco to give the link to the network and others on the cameras.

So essentially one-to-many? Do they work like that? (I genuinely don’t know, I’ve only ever used them point to point. Can anyone else pitch in here?)

Does anything change if you switch off all the others?

Yeah 4k for a security camera seems a bit OTT unless you’re going to get all blade runner enhance on it!

my thinking was 4k camera enables zooming but my thinking may be flawed as it seems to have been consistently so far. If I’ve got it on the highest setting I can just about read number plates but not on the lower ones. I’ve not tried a 1080p in the same place though to see if that would give the same level of zoom

my thinking was 4k camera enables zooming

TBH that sounds perfectly reasonable to me, I didn’t think of that.

Where are these things storing the footage, incidentally?

Are you getting the same symptoms with both live streaming and playback?

I may have missed it but are you using a stand alone DVR recorder for the cameras I assumed you are not?
4k is ok for pixels on snapshots and vids as more detail to see on an enabled monitor or tv but streaming over power lines is not recommend using them for an Xbox is just about the limit.( Not the new posh one)
Buy some cheap 30m cables and try direct with the cameras if they have the correct rj port on the cameras some are the old BNC to Ethernet adapters.

The plan was to use a pc to store the footage as I have a couple of other brand cameras that seem to work ok with blue iris and powerline (They are 1080p though). I figured they might not talk to the nvr of another brand. Wish I’d binned them now and gone down the nvr route with all the same brand camera!

If the stream dies in live view then nothing recorded either. There is a direct to disc record option in blue iris but that didn’t seem to help.

Your re-inventing the wheel dude.
I get why if you have the equipment but sometimes it’s just easier to go the whole hog.
Not saying it won’t work but it’s a battle that’s already been won and just works 99% of the time.
I’d still try the long cable it’s a cheap way of seeing if it’s the data not getting from one end to the other.

So essentially one-to-many? Do they work like that?

Yes, sort of. Connect one powerline device to your network, then all the others on the same ring main will be accessible on the network. You can get reasonable speeds too, but if you have many devices trying to use bandwidth concurrently you will struggle.

my thinking was 4k camera enables zooming but my thinking may be flawed as it seems to have been consistently so far.

The only flaw in this thinking would be if you’ve underestimated how much storage this is going to rapidly consume.

https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/video-storage-calculator/

Which isn’t actually anywhere near as bad as I expected. Using h.265 codec, 15 days worth of 2 cameras recording 24/7 at 15fps, medium quality, just over 1tb. High quality takes that to just over 2tb.

Can you unplug the camera, plug it intoa router (or hub) directly and your pc into the same device? That’ll eliminate pretty much all of the network and demo whether the network is at fault or the stream itself