What the IP era has in store for us….
If you look at all the well-known media resources covering the security industry in recent months of this year, it is easy to notice that a number of articles are devoted to a new direction – security IP television.
Most of these articles are, of course, advertising in nature. This is understandable. Companies are trying to quickly declare their involvement in a new direction in order to gain a competitive advantage.
Advertising articles present new capabilities of IP systems in comparison with traditional analog systems, and describe their advantages.
But…
Not everything is as smooth as we would like. There are a number of obvious and hidden obstacles that hinder the spread of IP systems. Let's try to «discover» some of them.
1. Since the IP systems direction is new, manufacturing companies strive to capture the growing market as quickly as possible and make a profit due to the novelty of the proposed solutions. Therefore, the prices for the components of IP systems are significantly higher than their traditional counterparts. Once again, the axiom is confirmed: everything new costs money.
So, the first obstacle: IP systems are more expensive than traditional systems.
Only a rapid growth of supply in this segment can reduce the high prices of IP systems. According to foreign experts, by 2009 the number of offers for IP equipment (cameras, servers, coders) will be almost equal to the number of components produced for traditional analog systems. The production capacities of Southeast Asia are already urgently being reoriented to the production of IP devices for the CCTV market. With the growth of supply, a gradual reduction in prices for network video equipment will begin. However, a reduction in the price of software for IP solutions is not predicted, since it will be supplemented with new functional capabilities due to intelligent processing of video content.
2. It is known that the quality of the resulting video image depends on the technical characteristics of the camera (not least on the sensitivity of the optical sensor matrix). Most IP cameras on the market have low technical characteristics compared to analog cameras. The sensitivity of the matrices in network cameras is usually very low (1–5 lux). Therefore, to obtain high-quality images from IP cameras, it is necessary to provide additional lighting at the site (megapixel IP cameras are especially sensitive to illumination). Ultimately, using the system will lead to additional costs for electricity.
With the development of the production base, the emergence of new technical solutions that improve image quality, IP cameras that can compete with analog cameras will appear on the market.
3. The next obstacle to the widespread use of IP systems is, oddly enough, the lack of knowledge in the field of IP solutions. Most installation companies, as well as end customers, are experiencing a clear shortage of qualified personnel to implement projects that use modern network technologies. For now, this is one of the main problems with the large-scale implementation of IP systems.
Everyone knows that everything comes with experience, so the lack of knowledge is a temporary obstacle. The following fact confirms this. Every year, the quantitative and qualitative change in the composition of engineering personnel in companies becomes more noticeable — there is a migration of specialists from the IT industry. «IT specialists» are increasingly beginning to set the tone in the promotion of new IP solutions.
4. The transmission of a digital signal from IP cameras over a distance depends on the transmission medium. If a conventional cable system is used, this distance is limited to a hundred meters (without additional devices). To transmit a digital signal over a longer distance, a number of additional devices (repeaters, media converters, etc.) will be needed. In addition, when organizing multi-camera video security systems, expensive network equipment is required that ensures uninterrupted transmission of data packets between system nodes (intelligent switches, routers, etc.). Thus, the cost of IP systems is greatly influenced by the data transmission medium and expensive infrastructure.
Reducing this component in the overall cost of IP systems directly depends on the development of network technologies.
5. Currently, security systems using IP cameras are significantly inferior to traditional systems in terms of the number of cameras involved (we do not take into account the economic component). One IP camera with a VGA resolution (640 x 480) transmits 0.5–1 MB of data (MJPEG) to the network per second. A limited number of cameras can work with such a flow in one network: for a 100 Mbit/s network – no more than 20 cameras. Therefore, to increase the number of IP cameras in the system, it is necessary to either limit the image resolution (which we would not like to do for obvious reasons), or reduce the transmission speed (although many customers very often use the term “real video” in their requirements).
The way out of the situation seems to be as follows: it is necessary to move the intelligent block into the camera for content analysis, so that only what really carries useful information for decision-making is transmitted to the network. There is confidence that such solutions are the future. Only with the development of the technical base (meaning the supply of miniature in size, but at the same time powerful in computing resources microcomputers) will it be possible to significantly increase the number of IP cameras involved in one system.
6. The software supplied by the IP camera manufacturer is usually not very suitable as the core of a full-fledged video security system. Therefore, to solve serious problems of ensuring the security of a protected facility, it is necessary to use specialized software developed by companies professionally engaged in the production of video data analysis systems.
I would like to especially note the fact that developers usually integrate several types of IP cameras (from different manufacturers) into specialized software. And therefore, the end customer always has the opportunity to additionally select certain cameras to solve the task.
So, let's summarize. Despite the fact that there are still a number of obstacles to the development of a new direction in security television, the number of offers on the IP equipment market will grow. The network security device industry will inevitably develop. And with the development of communication technologies, the emergence of new technical solutions in this area, traditional analog systems will gradually give way to modern digital systems.
All this will be…