bandwidth requirement for IP-based video servers

[bssi]

I'd like to start a discussion about how much bandwidth is needed for common, IP-based surveillance video servers. I'm talking about the kind that connect to analog CCTV cameras, compress the video to MJPEG or MPEG-4, and make the compressed video available via a wired or wireless LAN.

The problem that I see with these IP-based servers is simple -- it takes much too much data on the network to get video resolution, sharpness and frame rate that's anywhere near as good as simply connecting an analog camera to an old-fashioned DVR, and viewing the live and recorded video on the DVR.

As a result, the only use that I see for common, IP-based surveillance video servers is where the user can make do with extremely low video quality, or where bandwidth isn't an issue because a dedicated, high speed network for video is used.

-- Steve

[P]

D3 Data, a network camera software developer, provides a bandwidth calculation tool. Here is the link:


http://www.d3data.com/Calculator.view

There are many factors to be considered when trying to distiguish how much bandwidth will be required. This includes: resolution, fps, compression technology, amount of motion, etc..

[ahillyer]

Steve,

This has been a problem for years and there is a low bandwidth, IP based solution out there. Give me a call and I'd be happy to discuss further. 313-291-4900.

Regards,

Aaron Hillyer
Technology Consultant

[IPCCTV]

As the last post reply was probably? eluding to, I suspect there is very good reason not to record at high frame rate for all cameras - all of the time. You should try to balance the recording schedules with motion detection to minimise the hours of pointless viseo.

The numerous benefits of these IP cameras seems to have been overlooked. The fast searching capability, global access and off-site recording etc to name a few.

The internal network does not need to be sophisticated and should allow you to manage quite a high volume of data data back to a PC based DVR. Using good switches and not hubs minimises network collisions and retransmissions. A fast PC is required and I would suggest a 100Meg ethernet adapter as you could end up with a bottleneck with a slow card
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http://www.ipcctv-security.com for web enabled cctv products and services...

[noventadiez]

Hi all, I live in Toronto and own a child care centre. For a while have been wanting to offer web-cam service through my website for parents to be able to see their children from work (5 cams in total). I had a brief meeting with an IT friend who told me I cannot do that because the data transfer would be too high and would excede the limit set by my web host. Nevertheless I know other day care centers provide with this service so there's got to be a way. Thanks!

[IPCCTV]

You need to be careful to set the compression level and frame rate of the IP camera conservativly but also I suspect you wouldn't necessarily want to view all cameras simultaneously? Even so, it should be quite possible to do what you want. I have done this with a 16 channel system where I monitor all chanels and then select the one that interests me. It is possible.

I think your IT friend may be mis-understanding the quality levels, image sizes and refresh rates you are looking for. You also don't say what speed broadband you have. I've done this with 512K.
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http://www.ipcctv-security.com for web enabled cctv products and services...

[Ted@Mainline]

LAN network traffic by it's nature is very bursty and inconsistent. IP Video tends to be more steady in bandwidth than other types of IP traffic. The reality is that network managers normally have LOTS of network headroom available in the network. The costs of IP network conectivity have been coming down around 35-40% annually for YERAS. Net additional local bandwidth costs per port (LAN) are increadable cheap. Enterprise class switches cost less that $300 per port for POE Gigibit. Smaller workgroup Gigibit switches are less than $100 a port. A single Gigibit switch port can EASILY support over 200 IP cameras shooting 5 frames per second with 54KBytes per frame (VGA/4CIF resolution 640x480 pixels). This assumes 50% network overhead and 25% reserved for "normal" LAN traffic.

Bandwidth is NOT a problem for LAN implementations. Don't let your network admins bully you, bandwitdth is available. WAN connections is another story all together. This comment was directed at Local Attached Networks (LAN) and not Wide Area Networks (WAN).
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Ted Hayduk
Mainline

[jethrov]

offtopic: how can i deleta a post?

[videofairy]

[Intellio]

Aaaah, those bandwidth requirements...

If you need a certain resolution and a certain frame rate on your screen the only thing that will make the difference on your bandwidth consumption is the compression that you use... if we consider motion jpeg as being "100%" than todays's mpeg will lower your bandwidth needs to +- 50% and tomorrow's H.264 will even bring it down to 20%. But rest assured; there will never be enough bandwidth, more performant megapixel cams will eat up whatever the improved compression has to offer. it's the same story as the hardware and software on your computer, imagine to run windows 1.3 on today's quad core processors, it would be dazzling

Another way of looking at this bandwidth issue is to start making better use of what is available, use intelligent cameras that can learn which situations are of interest and will only use your bandwidth when something of interest is going on, and yes, we have something just like that lying on our shelf

Rgds,
Johan

Johan@Intellio.us
www.intellio.us