Hikvision 24 Port Fast Ethernet Smart PoE Switch DS-3E1326P-EI/M

Twenty-four Fast Ethernet PoE ports in one cabinet is twenty-four chances to lose track of which cable goes where. The Hikvision DS-3E1326P-EI/M is a 24-port Fast Ethernet smart PoE switch — the unit at the centre of a mid-sized camera install, and quietly the most important piece of paperwork on the job.

Stand in front of a populated 24-port switch and every port looks identical. The link lights tell you something is connected; they do not tell you it is the camera over the loading bay. Two years on, a camera drops out and the person sent to look at it is not the person who pulled the cable. What happens next was decided on the day of the pull, not on the day of the fault.

Where it earns its place on a job

It earns its place when the camera count justifies one landing point and the system will outlive the crew that built it. The second condition is the one contractors skip. Label both ends of every cable as you pull it, never afterwards — afterwards means tracing, and tracing is the job you were trying to avoid. Keep the port-to-camera schedule as a document handed over with the system, not carried in the installer’s head, and put a printed copy inside the cabinet. Then name the cameras in the recorder to match it, so when the client reports Camera 14 offline the engineer knows which port to look at before leaving the office.

An undocumented 24-port switch is why a five-minute fault becomes a day of unplugging cables one at a time to see which picture disappears — and the client pays for that day.

Before you order — three things to confirm

• The naming scheme, agreed before the first cable moves. Camera names, port numbers and cable labels must all say the same thing, in the client’s words for their own areas. A schedule in the installer’s shorthand is no better than none.
• Labels on site with the cable, not promised later. Check the labels are in the van before the pull starts, and that they survive years in a warm ceiling void rather than being marker pen on tape. Retro-labelling a live 24-port switch is a day nobody quoted for.
• The port schedule named as a deliverable on the quotation. Write it into the scope alongside the commissioning sheet. If it is not on the quotation it is an afterthought, and afterthoughts get dropped on the last day of a job that ran long.

Technical specifications

• Manufacturer and model: Hikvision DS-3E1326P-EI/M
• Ports: 24 PoE ports
• Port speed: Fast Ethernet
• Management: smart managed, DS-3E1 series
• Power delivery: Power over Ethernet on the switch ports
• Full manufacturer datasheet available on request — call 16454

Compatibility

Works with Hikvision cameras and recorders and with standards-compliant PoE IP cameras generally. For documentation the pairing that matters is the recorder: whatever channel naming your NVR or VMS allows should be set at commissioning to match the port schedule, never left as Channel 1 to Channel 24. The same discipline applies on smaller jobs to the equivalent Fast Ethernet smart unit, the Hikvision DS-3E1309P-EI.

What’s in the box

The switch itself. We do not list accessories here, because pack contents vary by revision and we would rather you did not plan around something that may not arrive. Contents for the current revision are confirmed on the order.

Common questions on this model

I have inherited an existing 24-port switch with no documentation. What now?
Build the schedule once, deliberately, instead of rediscovering it fault by fault. Work out of hours with the client’s agreement, one port at a time against the recorder’s live view, labelling both ends as you go. It is a billable half-day survey, and it beats repeating that half-day at every callout.

The ports are numbered on the switch already — why label the cable too?
Because the port number tells you nothing at the far end. When a camera will not power up you need the right cable identified while you are on a ladder in a corridor, with the cabinet three floors away and nobody in it. The camera-end label is the half that saves the visit.

Should the schedule live on paper or in the system?
Both. A printed copy in the cabinet, a file handed over with the maintenance documents, and matching camera names in the recorder. Paper survives a dead server, and the recorder names are what the client quotes at you over the phone.

Supplied as genuine Hikvision stock with the official one-year manufacturer warranty and delivery across Egypt. For the datasheet or project pricing, call 16454.