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Hard Knock lessons from a veteran of CCTV systems big and small

When you are looking at planning an IP camera system conventional rules for wiring the cameras and recording the cameras go out the window. Below I have listed three design traits that have changed from conventional coaxial-based camera systems to IP based camera systems.

Rule one : Infrastructure Design

two years ago I was presented with a massive camera system that needed over ninety cameras in a building that was over 750,000 square ft. The challenge, using traditional camera design, was cabling each camera back to a central location where the command console was located. In some examples, camera locations were over 1,500ft from the command center. Since coaxial wires limitation for RG59 and RG6 wire are between eight hundred and 1000ft, solving the distance limitation problem was vital. Using the methods open to me at the time, I had a choice between fiber optic wire or UTP ( unshielded twisted pair ) wire. Although fiber optics generally will produce a clearer picture with less distortion, it was cost prohibitive for the project. I selected UTP wire and with an active receiver at the command console and passive transmitter at the camera. This provided for wire runs of nearly 3000ft. UTP wire is simply CAT3 or CAT5 cable ( typically called Ethernet wire ), which is used for telephone and info networks. One of the four pairs of wires sends video down the cable. The twisting of the cable provides its unique benefits. This gives the cable its name of unshielded twisted pair. At the time, now more than four years back, this was the best answer for the application because it met the standards for broadcasting the video and met the client’s budget.

IP Video changes everything.

Using IP cameras presents a completely new set of rules for transmitting video. Where before we were able to transmit a video signal up to 1000ft using coaxial cable we are now limited to only 300ft or 100 meters. Initially, this could appear to be a downside. To anyone that is familiar with planning a PC network it is apparent this layout is actually an advantage. Imagine the application below: You have 5 cameras you need installed. They’re all found along a back wall of the building looking out to the shipping and receiving area. The recorder is found at the front of the building in an IT closet. Under standard video design, all 5 cameras would have a coaxial wire installed from the camera to the recorder. In this example, we could say the distance is a mean of 500ft from the recorder to a camera. 5 cameras at 500ft each will require 2,500ft of coaxial wire. Employing a network solution the following wiring would be needed. A single wire, sometimes fiber, would be pulled from the front of the building to the back. At every end of the fiber, there would be a termination point. The termination point at the front of the building would be considered the Main Distribution Frame or MDF. The point at the back of the building would be the Intermediate Distribution Frame or IDF. An IDF is defined as a location between the MDF and the end device, in this case the camera. All the cameras would be cabled to the IDF location. For our example, we will say it’s a median of 100ft from each camera to the IDF. We might require 500ft of network wire. Conclusion is that instead of pulling 2500ft of coaxial cable you are installing 500ft of CAT5e cable and 500ft of fiber.

The Big Bonus behind IP Video

The chief benefit behind a network solution is scalability, which leads to serious long, and short term cost savings. When you have 5 locations all with five cameras and all 500ft from the recorder, the costs add up quickly with traditional systems. In this position the cost savings can really start to add up. Going back to our example for a minute, let’s say you need to add a new camera to view the inside shipping door. The infrastructure is prepared. Now all that is’s needed is pulling a single CAT5e wire from the new camera location to the IDF. Perhaps this is only 50ft away. Using the old design, you’d need to pull another 500ft of coaxial cable back to the recorder. This adds up to a wire savings and a big labor cost reduction.

Rule 2 : PoE – The’Power’ of a Single Cable

PoE or Power over Ethernet is simply the transmission of power together with information over a standard Ethernet cable. In a Power over Ethernet system, a PoE network switch supplies up to 15Watts of power to the end device. This could be a telephone, camera or any other device that sits on a network and needs no more than 15 watts of power. When designing an IP camera system you need to look for cameras that use this technology. There are two basic benefits when using PoE for your system layout.

Benefit 1 : only one cable is critical to each camera for both power and video transmission. Vs a normal camera system that uses a Siamese cable for both video and power. A Siamese wire has a coaxial RG59 cable and typically an eighteen gauge 2 conductor wire molded together to form a single cable. This gives the appearance and ease of pulling a single cable to each camera. The downsides to Siamese wire compared to CAT5 cable is it is significantly more expressive. Siamese cables contain more copper, which is a pricey commodity in today’s market. Siamese cable is also tougher and cumbersome to install.

Benefit 2 : No further power supply is needed for powering the cameras and it only needs a single termination at the camera and switch location. These 2 extra features lead to the same benefits : savings and a more flexible and scalable system solution. Scalability and space wants are becoming an enlarging concern for many IT departments. When adding a network camera system the potential rack space required for the present as well as future can be extremely critical when planning a system. Using PoE can use less space and reduce heavy, rigid bundles of cables.

Rule 3 : Centralized or Edge Recording

There is no wrong or right when it comes to using edge recording or centralized recording. A majority of your decision will depend upon your personal application and existing network infrastructure. A cross-breed of the 2 styles may be the best solution but this may add further cost and limit your available camera options. In a recent meeting with a school district, I was questioned about which solution was better. I responded that I felt neither was a better solution ; both solutions have their benefits and it relies on the application. During my meeting I described the following benefits and disadvantages of each. Centralized Recording:

Imagine you’ve a company which has five buildings varying in size between ten thousand to fifty thousand square ft. All five of your buildings are located within a large business park. Each building has a limited number of fiber optic wires between them. Your company has a main server room found in the largest of the five buildings. The IT department manages the server room and there’s limited restricted access to that room. The remaining 4 buildings are accessible through fiber from the server room.

For this example, centralized recording offers you the most cost effective and scalable solution. Centralized recording works well here. There’s a main server room and all the buildings are connected thru locally run fiber. Using a single recording location is inexpensive because all the recorded video is stored at a central location. A single server as opposed to five servers ( if using edge recording ) will record the video, leading to a big cost benefits. In each building, PoE network switches would connect to the cameras. The fiber optic wire would broadcast the video back to the central server room for recording. This solution is also awfully scalable. Adding a camera to any location in the five buildings is so simple as connecting a camera to the nearest PoE switch. In this particular application, centralized recording fits best because of the environment and infrastructure available. A drawback of centralized recording is if a fiber is cut between any one of the buildings and the server, all the cameras within that building will no longer be recorded or be in a position to be viewed live. In this example, all of the video from these cameras will be lost.

Edge Recording:

In this example, you’ve got a company office building and a producing plant. The two buildings are found about one mile aside from one another. You’ve a dedicated T1 connection between the 2 locations. The T1 is used to share info transmission between the two sites. Most of the installed cameras will be at the manufacturing plant so that company is able to monitor the plant remotely. The company office will have 4 to 6 cameras installed to view the main entrance and worker parking area.

For this example, edge recording offers the most cheap solution for your company. Limited connectivity between the two locations is the most important obstruction. The standard IP camera requires about 2Mb per second available bandwidth. The 1st camera would consume all the available bandwidth of a T1 connection making centralized recording impossible. Edge recording does not prevent centralized viewing it only forestalls the recording of the camera centrally. For this example, you would use 2 network video recorders. You would scale each recorder to fit the quantity of cameras they will be recording. From the client side or remote connection, you’d be able to configure the system like it were a single connection. The only difference would be the refresh speed of the remote cameras. In this example, edge recording supplies the most inexpensive answer while still meeting the goals of your company. The downside, in this application, is the cost of having two servers and slower live display rates of the cameras.

The Rule Summary:

By reading this, I am hoping that you’re able to see how IP video offers a very different design and new features that were not possible or cost prohibitive with a traditional coaxial cable system. There are numerous other benefits when using IP video. The three listed above are only some of the benefits that IP video technology has made available to the safety industry.

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