Can't Maintain Network Transfer Speeds

Question

I have a real head scratcher here. Has anyone ever encountered a situation in which a network can maintain a certain amount of data transfer over a short period, before dropping off suddenly? Restarting the program responsible for the data transfer eliminates the problem, temporarily.

I'm working with a small IP camera network - 3 installations, a total of 20 cameras running over CAT6 and POE into switches. Each installation is linked to the monitoring center via Ubiquiti Nanostations, ptp links. All cameras are monitored via a workstation running Blue Iris.

Recently we've been having some issues with low framerate - 1, 2 FPS. I noticed that if I restart Blue Iris, the frame rates increase, with a corresponding increase in network transfer (max is approx. 5500kB/s total). Strangely, after about 8 minutes, the speed drops 10-fold to ~500kB/s, and won't recover unless I restart the monitoring program. As soon as I restart, it works great. For another 8 minutes.

I've switched monitoring workstations, the PC isn't the bottleneck. I don't think that anything is overheating - Spot checking the switches doesn't reveal anything burning hot, and I imagine if it was a heat issue, the speed wouldn't recover with no time delay (ie. restarting the program immediately fixes the issue).

Thanks

Answer 1

I would recommend updating all firmwares and applications involved to the latest version. Also check your memory and hard-disk usage. Maybe some buffer fills up und therefore transmission speed slows down.