I promise you guys, I've been researching and trying to figure out how to accomplish what I'm asking now. The problem is that I have, what are probably simple questions, that I don't have anyone to speak to about. So hopefully you'll tolerate my ignorance long enough to help.
I have a few VLANs to setup, but I want to focus on my camera system for the moment in hopes that it's the most complicated, and isolated, and I can do the rest myself.
So here's the task: 8 cameras, 1 PC (server), setup on a VLAN, that I can access from the untagged network.
Hardware: 1 EdgeMax Router 48 PoE 500, 5 EdgeMax 48 Switches, Cameras currently go to 2 of the switches, 1 upstairs, 1 downstairs.
Questions:
This is where I'm a bit confused... do I need to know the physical port the cameras go into? How does the switch know what device I want on the VLAN? Do I reserve the MAC for the VLAN or do I reserve ports (both?)?
Which device should I be configuring the VLANs on... all of them? It seems to me that I read something about setting up one switch as a kind of master that will then communicate out VLAN information to the rest of the switches... but should the router be handling this instead since I'm working with something other than the router provided by the ISP?
I have lots of information in my head, just not sure how to pull the trigger. Oh, and can I make all these changes without needing to restart any of the equipment?
Thanks!