Network cards settings can be optimized to work with Security Center's high throughput, especially if there are more than one per server.
NIC Teaming
NIC Teaming, also known as load balancing and failover (LBFO), allows multiple network adapters on a computer to be used together for either bandwidth aggregation (to handle high throughput) or traffic failover (to prevent connectivity loss in the event of a network component failure). These modes are named differently depending on the hardware vendor. LBFO is available as of Windows 2012R R2 and can be accessed by using the lbfoadmin.exe utility available from the Start run or command prompt.
It is recommended to use what is the equivalent of failover; that is, one adapter is on standby until a network failure occurs, and then the standby adapter takes over. The other modes are also supported, but require more complex network configuration and may cause system disruption.
- teaming mode
- Switch Independent
- Load balancing mode
- Address Hash
- Standby adapter
- Select which adapter is used as the standby.
For more information about NIC teaming configuration using Windows management tool, see the Microsoft Support website to get the latest information on NIC Teaming.
Recommended settings
- It is highly recommended to always install the latest drivers for your network cards. You can download the latest driver from the manufacturer's website. Network performances are directly related to the driver version and many problems are often resolved simply by upgrading the network card driver.
- Enable the Large RTP packets option in your camera's Video configuration page if your system supports jumbo frames end-to-end. This means you should be running Security Center 5.8 or later, and ensuring that your cameras, network, and server NIC all support jumbo frames.
- It is recommended to configure your network cards to receive and send large amount of data. Buffer size, flow control, and other settings should be optimized for large amounts of data transmissions. For example, Flow Control Rx and Tx for a Broadcom or an Intel network card should be enabled. The option Large Send Offload [IPv4] for the same manufacturers should also be enabled. The Receive or Transmit buffers should be increased to 1024 or more.
- It is recommended to configure the advanced features available on a network card so that CPU interruptions are minimized and transmission performances are maximized. For example, on an Intel or Broadcom card, enable the Receive Side Scaling option, while making sure the number of RSS queues and RSS processors are set to the maximum value. You should also enable the Interrupt Moderation option by setting it to an Adaptive mode.
Network cards order or prioritization
When multiple network cards are available on the machine running Security Center, set the NIC card that will be used primarily by the application or the service as the card with the highest priority.