RAA Group

Video surveillance is growing in importance as organizations seek to protect physical and capital assets. At the same time, the need to monitor more people, places, and things coupled with a desire to extract more useful information from video data is driving new demands for scalability, capabilities, and capacity. These demands are outstripping the abilities of traditional analog video surveillance approaches.

Fortunately, digital video surveillance solutions based on open and standard networking protocols are providing new ways of collecting, analyzing, and archiving enormous amounts of video data. With an entirely digital approach, Sun™’s Reference Architecture for Video Surveillance with ipConfigure Enterprise Surveillance Manager (ESM) offers both extensive scalability and capacity, as well as the flexibility to retrieve essential information from gathered video data. This document describes the reference architecture, and provides basic installation, configuration, and scaling information.

The IP video surveillance market continues to experience explosive growth in 2008. Selecting the right solution to manage an IP video system is the most important decision to be made since it will function as the core of the system. Here are 10 different things ipConfigure offers and should be considered when purchasing IP surveillance software.

1. Browser based interface…

The browser based interface removes the need to install client software while making the system accessible from any computer on the network. With the support for both Firefox and Internet Explorer the application is accessible from any Windows, Mac, Solaris, or Linux operating systems.

2. High camera count & megapixel support…

ipConfigure offers a highly optimized motion detection algorithm which delivers low false recording rates and support for high camera quantities. A low ‘per-camera’ CPU cost will support 120+ standard VGA resolution cameras or 60+ megapixel cameras on a single server.

3. Independent live & recording frame rates…

Each camera allows for independent settings of both frame rates and resolutions for either live view or recording. Most surveillance solutions only support a single frame rate for both live and recording, this is problematic when trying to optimize network bandwidth while maintaining quality recordings..

4. Unlimited cameras, buildings & users…

Through an open database (SQL) architecture ipConfigure products support unlimited salability of cameras, buildings, and users while leveraging standard IT rules and protocols. Other software offerings utilize proprietary databases which tend to be slow unreliable while requiring lengthy re-indexing sessions.

5. Centralized system management…

The browser based admin interface provides a single point of access for administrators to manage all aspects of the surveillance system. Because the database is leveraged for system settings there is no need to access individual servers on the system to manage user access or camera settings.

6. Intelligent system health monitoring & reporting…

As an IP centric solution each component (cameras, switches, and servers) provides intelligent information about its status. This data is collected in the database and is reported to the alarm page and emailed in real-time. Now system administrators have actionable information to ensure all the cameras are active in addition to real-time notification of cameras, network and server devices.

7. Secure video connections through SSL encryption…

ipConfigure supports SSL encryption to restrict access and provide secure connections between cameras, servers, and client interfaces. This technology is what provides secure connections for the on-line banking industry and ensures protection from eavesdroppers and man-in-the-middle attacks.

8. Licensed by quantity, no MAC address required…

Software license management is based on the number of cameras authorized in the database. The system administrator can easily change camera models and IP addresses freely. This methodology is found to be the simplest since it does not require MAC address re-registration when replacing or moving IP cameras.

9. Intuitive interface support for all users…

The interface provides a fully functional management platform for access to live and recorded surveillance video. Map navigation of live cameras, motion detection graph, and the alarm monitoring interface leverage familiar browser navigation methodologies making access and navigation simple for even non-technical users.

10. Enterprise architecture since version 1.0…

Starting with version 1.0 ipConfigure has focused on an architecture capable of supporting up to unlimited cameras, users, and locations. A three-tier computing model is the foundation of this design and operates under a service based process. The final component of the application is the HTML interface which is capable of supporting unlimited simultaneous users.

Learn more at www.ipconfigure.com