Video Surveillance system

[NuBI]

Hi there,

I'm making a project related to video-surveillance. I've been making searches about video surveillance, but still there are some doubts in the architecture part that only people with some knowledge in this camp can clear it.

Before i do the question, I’ll show the architecture i made:



1 - The question i got is if its worth put a dedicated record server in each ip camera groups. My idea is record all mjpeg's in the server "SERVER" but i don’t know if the permanent recording will delay the live streams to the terminals :S

Sorry for my English, I’m not use to it

Thanks in advance.

[Kushnirenko]

Switch is usually faster and cheaper than router. (Well there are exceptions to this rule). So unless you have plenty of financial resources in your project I would suggest to use switches. There are actually so called level 2.5 switches that have more brains that ordinary switches but are somewhat simplier than routers.

Switched network can easily handle 50Mbps and hard disk recording speed is 10 times faster than that. So my guess is that unless you have tens of cameras 1 server is enough.

What will really be a bottleneck in your project is wireless router. That will really be a reason why your remote users will see bad quality pictures unless you have high quality wireless network (with several access points for example). WiFi is not very good for video.... (I't my personal opinion. don't flame me on that)

[Lee Sharp]

I see no problems. You do want to segment your camera networks to keep the noise down, and streaming is high demand, so a solid router is required. No Fry's d-link special.

[NuBI]

Thanks for the answers, it really help me clear some things like the router wireless and the switch/router choice...

I'm not sure on what video surveillance software i will use. The person who's following my project advise me to use zoneminder but today i'm looking for others software just to have sure who would be better.

I just download these ones:
- Motion
- eLvIS
- vtwatch
- Arguvision
- NetCam

Do y'all ever work with these ones? is it any good?

Thanks again for the answers.


EDIT: Based in your tips, I did some changes concerning the security and the poor video quality on Wi-Fi security:



Concerning the security i decided to use a router just to make the connection between the internet and my network and use switches to connect the server/ip cameras/PDA's

And i put more AP's to get better quality images for PDA.

The server in store the information and manage the system with a software (maybe zoneminder)

[Lee Sharp]

I would get a 4 or 5 segment router, and place the LAN in one segment, cams and server 1 in another, and cams and server 2 in a third segment. You might want to look at m0n0wall or the equivalent. This will keep the cam traffic off the entire network.

[NuBI]

I would get a 4 or 5 segment router, and place the LAN in one segment, cams and server 1 in another, and cams and server 2 in a third segment. You might want to look at m0n0wall or the equivalent. This will keep the cam traffic off the entire network.

I didnt understand it fully :s you mean split the network in 3 parts: 2 for each cam group and their server and another for the LAN (workstations), and connect them with the router??

[Lee Sharp]

Correct. That way all traffic is fully segmented. However you can still reach all componants. If you need a good but cheap router, try m0n0wall. I install it on old Dell GX1s.

[NuBI]

thanks for the idea... ill do that and show y'all to gave me some feedback