Be Careful, Big Boss is Watching!

With increasing Internet bandwidth and the need to access information
anytime, anywhere, there's a thrust towards moving everything over IP. So,
whether it's voice, video, IM or even surveillance; everything has moved over
IP. At all leading public places and events, IP-based surveillance is fast
becoming the de-facto standard for monitoring security. So, whether it is the
upcoming Olympics in Beijing, traffic lights in New Delhi or the newly
constructed malls , IP Surveillance implementations are on a roll across the
world. Enterprises too are deploying IP surveillance to safeguard their data
centers, ware houses and even offices. And like we've mentioned before, IP
cameras can be accessed from anywhere across the globe, all you need is a web
browser and access to broadband Internet connectivity. In this story we take a
look at the various IP surveillance solutions available in the market, and what
all you need to know

before implementing IP surveillance.

Choose the best one for your need

One of the oldest forms of Surveillance which is still popular is CCTV. Many
vendors provide IP based CCTV Surveillance. However, you can look beyond the
CCTVs towards other intuitive solutions. You can deploy a Standalone CCTV Box
that connects to a TV or monitor and supports around 16 channels in one box.
Another one is DVR card-based surveillance; here you need a decent system with a
PCI slot for inserting the DVR card. You can directly connect your cameras to
this DVR card. Here again the average support is for 16 channels. The problem
with CCTV based IP surveillance is that you need to have dedicated cabling for
it. With IP Surveillance you do not need any special cabling, all you need is an
open network port to deploy an IP camera. Another advantage with IP cameras is
that they can draw power from Ethernet ports. So, if you deploy a camera at a
place where there is no power around or where there's a possibility that someone
can disconnect power, PoE comes handy. IP cameras come in different flavors: PTZ
(pan,tilt and zoom), fixed, low light cameras, etc. IP cameras support
progressive scan, that allows you to remove still images from a video and save
them separately.

Most of the surveillance systems support integration with third party systems
such as alarms systems, access control, and for large area applications like
traffic management or building management.

How to choose a surveillance camera

You should look for a camera which provides 25 fps or faster frame rate, as this
results in jitter free images. Monitoring through a Web interface is another
must, as it allows you to monitor your infrastructure anywhere, anytime. Many IP
cameras allow you to monitor through wireless devices. You can also access
surveillance video through your mobile. Make sure that the camera supports
standard wireless encryptions such as WEP 128-bit or 256-bit, WPA-PSK, etc.
Another important thing to look for is motion detection, as this not only alerts
you as soon as a new event is detected but can also help in recording important
events.

If you need to prove a happening, with date and time, look for the time stamp
feature. You can also look for cameras which provide embedded watermarks on the
footage, to reinforce authenticity. To protect yourself from attacks like
sniffing or IP replay, look for cameras which support encryption. To counter
these threats many people change the default port on which surveillance video is
being streamed. Other things you need to look for are motorized control, remote
control, email based alerts etc.

Choosing storage for IP surveillance

Storage of the video footage is a key part of any surveillance system. There are
however problems in storing images generated from IP cameras, as even a single
camera can generate more than 10 GB of data in a single day. Vendors offer
dedicated storage for video surveillance. For instance, Seagate offers Series
SV35.3 hard drives which are only meant for Video Surveillance. They have
increased data rates upto 480 Mb/s with SATA interface. According to Seagate
these drives can operate under drive case temperature of upto 75 degrees C.
Also, as surveillance system performs constant write operations on a disk, using
storage devices such as NAS can degrade the performance of a solution, because
these devices are designed for environments where balanced read/ write
operations take place.