Digital Video Surveillance Systems and Broadband
Internet
When it comes to video surveillance systems many
customers are looking to monitor employees, customer or property.
Many times one of the first questions customers ask is Since I have
high speed internet at both home and the office, can I monitor this
myself? Although access to broadband internet is become more affordable and more
accessible than every before we need to understand the remote
video monitoring still faces several challenges. When
transporting video over a network one must ensure that the
network was designed to support and handle such traffic. Simply
having a 6MB 10 MB residential broadband connection like DSL
or High Speed Cable in most cases does not meet the needed
quality of broadband service to support remote video
surveillance. Most cheap broadband connections struggle to
support applications like VoIP calling, web surfing, email and
streaming audio. These applications require much less bandwidth
than that of remote video monitoring.
When it comes to selecting the correct broadband connection it
is recommended that you first consider a data T1 line. Depending
on the number of video cameras being monitored a data T1 will
provide the quality of service over the network to support as
many as 10-30 cameras before bandwidth and quality becomes an
issue, be sure to check current broadband prices in your area. The chart below will give you an idea of the number of
cameras you can use with the different types of internet
connections.
-
ADSL (1MB 6 MB) up to 2 cameras
-
SDSL (1.2 MB 1.5 MB) up to 4 cameras
-
High Speed Cable (3 MB 10 MB) up to 6-8 cameras
-
Data T1 (1.5 MB) up to 25-30 cameras
-
Bonded Data T1 (3 MB) up to 50 cameras
-
Ethernet (10 MB) up to 100-150 cameras
We are seeing companies like AT&T, Verizon and the Cable
provider starting to roll out much faster and high quality
broadband connects some as much as 100 MB with fiber to the curb
or building location.
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No Single
point of failure. Each camera being a separate intelligent
entity, there is no one place that can fail to bring the entire
system down.
-
Redundancy or
fault tolerance can be built into the management system ensuring
high reliability.
-
Many new
construction projects include structured network cable
throughout the buildings, and this makes deployment of
IP/Network cameras a relatively trivial matter. Additional
cameras, temporary solutions or single cameras in a location can
easily be implemented with minimal installation work.
-
Improved
image performance. As there is no conversion of the video into
an analog signal prior to the MPEG-4 compression, the IP cameras
generally provide superior image quality. Advanced features such
as integrated alarms, audio and motion detection are being built
into the camera and being transmitted via IP over the network.
-
Network PTZ
cameras can be controlled via the network without additional
cabling. A fixed camera can easily be replaced by a PTZ model.
No extra cables have to be run for PTZ controls.
-
Power over
Ethernet availability means a power cable may not be needed. If
the network supports Power over Ethernet, the camera can be
powered by the Ethernet connection; meaning only one cable is
needed for the entire functionality of the device.
-
Plug and
Play; IP cameras use a protocol called UPnP, which detects the
camera when it is on a network.
-
Network
cameras have built in browsers allowing occasional users to
connect from anywhere on the network. Network cameras generally
support firmware uploads making functionality improvements
possible without equipment redundancy.
