| Change is inevitable and having been in the security
industry for over two decades, Danny Forrest has seen lots of it.
As president of Houston, TX based, Eyeforce Inc. the company
specializes in video surveillance monitoring and hosted managed access
control services. Forrest has been adapting to the market, as he
puts it, in a "Texas can do style" even when the industry couldn't.
He is not shy about telling you how it is.
Knowing how to build
networks is the key to the doorway of success. "In the mid
1990s, I started noticing that the time was here to have all the
systems integrate," states Forrest.
"Now that we have accomplished this as an industry we really need
to improve networks and utilize access to things like cheaper
bandwidth," he comments. "In 1995 I opened a central station for
video monitoring in the Houston area to provide monitoring services to
customers like car dealerships and office buildings. At that
time we used phone lines and kept everything working off one
computer," he recalls. In today's telecom environment the low
cost of high speed internet has made it possible for more customers
needing video monitoring services look at
CCTV systems and video
monitoring as a cost effect way to detour crime. |
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IP Video Advantages
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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.
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Redundancy or
fault tolerance can be built into the management system ensuring
high reliability.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Plug and Play;
IP cameras use a protocol called UPnP, which detects the
camera when it is on a network.
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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.
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