Media Converter best for Surveillance Network

Media Converter best for Surveillance Network

Over the years, there has been a growing popularity of Video based Ethernet networks, resulting in the increasing use of Ethernet switches in the video network infrastructure.

Many types of video security and surveillance networks that are designed for applications in different environments. Analog video network and IP video network are the two most commonly used types for security and surveillance video transmission.

While IP video is more advance and can provide better image quality and network performance in large scale. The biggest character of IP video surveillance network is that every camera has its own IP address to tell itself from the others in the whole video network. Currently, with the demand for higher transmission speed, image quality and longer transmission distances, fiber optic cables are widely used in the video network. Thus, in both of the two surveillance networks, media conversion are necessary, like conversions between fiber and copper or video to fiber. The following will offer the cabling solutions that using media converters.

Video Media converter is a simple networking device that enables you to interconnect networks or network devices with different speeds, operation types, modes and media types. And the most common type usually works as a transceiver, converting the electrical signals in copper unshielded twisted pair (UTP) network cabling to light waves used for fiber optic cabling. It is essential to have the fiber optic connectivity if the distance between two network devices is greater than the copper cabling's transmission distance. Since media converters are IEEE compliant devices, they implement IEEE data encoding rules.

What is the

SFP module?

The small form-factor pluggable (SFP) is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for both telecommunication and data communications applications. The form factor and electrical interface are specified by a multi-source agreement (MSA).

Media converter?

A fiber media converter is a simple networking device that make it possible to connect two dissimilar media types such as twisted pair with fiber optic cabling. Twisted pair cable, coaxial cable and other copper cabling can only support limited length before signal becomes too weak. Main application area is in security surveillance.

Why Best:

Ease of Use and High Availability

The SFP ports are widely used in the Gigabit Ethernet and the Fiber channel to provide a flexible and cost-saving solution for the enterprise networks and data centers. SFP port available in Enterprise Gigabit Ethernet Switcher. During the troubleshooting entire network will be down for time being.

Configuring and installing redundant solution of media converter is much easier to handle and to manage than higher-layer devices. And it will makes the troubleshooting easier if you add management functions to the media converter.

Proprietary

SFP modules are vendor dependent and switch is not available or that part number switch manufacture is stopped. In that case whole network switches needs to be stopped.

Media Converter is available, it can change any time. Its biggest advantage of this product.

EMI Emissions

The heat and EMI emissions are one of the biggest problems related to SFP devices.

No Such pain with media Converter.

Flexibility and Simplification

Wonderfull performance with LAN without protocol transparency with 850 nm and 1300 nm multimode fiber and 1310 nm and 1550 nm single-mode fiber.

It is of much flexibility for media converter to combine copper with 850 nm and 1300 nm multimode fiber and 1310 nm and 1550 nm single-mode fiber. With protocol transparency, it can be applied in anywhere in the local network or remote network whether it's a LAN, WAN or the MAN environment.

Handling Warning

Copper SFP are static sensitive. To prevent damage from electrostatic discharge (ESD), it is recommended to attach an ESD preventative wrist strap to your wrist and to a bare metal surface whenever you install or remove a Copper SFP module.

No such warning with media converter.

Safety Warning

Only trained and qualified personnel should be permitted to install or replace.

No such personnel required.

Spaceing

SFP Module takes up less space at Network Switch port.

Media converter  takes Little more space.

Powering

SFP Module Take power from Enterprise Ethernet Switch.

Media converter derives power from the switch it's plugged into. (Media converter requires a separate AC power outlet.)

Cost Reduction

Compared with the hybrid media switches, the cost of media converters with cost-effective Ethernet switches is much lower. This type of media converter solution can cost significantly less than that relies on higher-layer devices such as routers or switches.

Biggest advantage in this type of topology is where network consist of more than hundred nodes network. Fault point is reducing to switch only.

Analog Video Network Cabling Infrastructure

In a typical analog video network (shown in the above picture), analog CCTV cameras are connected to a central management room or devices (VCR—video cassette recorder or DVR—digital video recorder) via coaxial cables. If the camera has PTZ (Pan-Tilt-Zoom) function, an additional controller is added.

As mentioned, the performance and the transmission distance are limited by using copper cables. To connector more fixed analog cameras and PTZ analog cameras, fiber optic cable should be introduced to this typical network. Then fiber media converters are the best solutions. The following picture shows the basic structure or an upgraded version of a typical analog video structure which using fiber optic cable in this network.

To connect the fixed analog cameras to the server room, a pair of fiber media converters should be added between the server room and cameras. Video signals will be transmitted into fiber optic signals. For analog PTZ cameras, there are two types of signals should be converted into fiber optic signals, one for video and one for data. Thus, two different media converters or a fiber media converter that covers the two functions should be installed.

It is known that fiber media converters should be used in pairs. As one of the media converters is in deploy on the fiber end that near the camera, the other one should be deploy on the other fiber ends that near the server room. For better management, all the fiber media converters at the fiber end near the server room could be installed in a managed fiber media converter rack chassis.

IP Video Network Cabling Infrastructure

In a typical IP video surveillance network (shown in the above picture), IP cameras are connected directly to the local area network and transport video across the IP network via UTP cabling and switches. PoE IP cameras are also time-save and cost-effect solutions. Video can be recorded to any PC or server on the network. To introduce fiber optic cabling in to this typical IP video network, the method is similar to introducing fiber optic into an analog video network as described in the above paragraph.

In the following case (shown in the following picture), PoE IP cameras are used. A pair of PoE media converters should be installed on both ends of a length of fiber optic cable to achieve the conversion between video and fiber. At the computer side where the videos are recorded, a pair of Ethernet media converters should be installed. All of the media converters near the network switches can be set at a managed media converter chassis before the connected to the switches.

Biography:

Arindam Bhadra is an eSecurity professional 11yr + in this industry. He is a good freelance blogger. His blog is now No 1. Blog in India. 2.8L page viewer globally. Mr. Bhadra is an Electronics & telecommunication Engineer from IETE, New Delhi. He is a member of FSAI from 2011 & Go Beyond security from 2008. His blog arindamcctvaccesscontrol.blogspot.com focuses on security & Safety bloggers. Apart from his job, he loved to spend all his time with eSecurity & Safety technology and loves to help people. He is a Tech enthusiast and has written articles over the period on this blog. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Google+ etc.

This artical publish on May 2017 issue @ Safe Secure Magazine

Difference between Dynamic and Static IP

Difference between Dynamic and Static IP

The major difference between dynamic and static IP is that dynamic IPs change every time one connects to the internet, while static IPs remain the same.

Internet Protocols, also known as IP addresses is a 32-bit number that is usually assigned to a computer when it connected to a network, such as the Internet. The IP address works similar to an actual address and lets computers know where to send data packets. The network devices use these address in order to communicate with each other.

The IP address are made up of 4 parts of numbers that are divided by dots (.) So, a typical IP address will looking something like – 72.169.189.01.

Although, the IP Based product / computers communicate with each other using IP addresses, to make it easier to remember the internet uses DNS or Domain Name System. This DNS is sort of an address book that pairs names to IP addresses. For example, if one wanted to visit the Google website, they would type in www.google.com in the address bar. The DNS will look up the IP address (74.125.239.35) paired with this name and will ping that address. Their system will respond back and the webpage will load on your computer.

There are two types of IPs – dynamic and static IP addresses. The major difference between dynamic and static IP is that dynamic IPs change every time one connects to the internet, while static IPs remain the same.

There are limited amount of IP addresses that are available and for this reason, many companies assign dynamic IPs, unless a static IP is asked for. So, every time a device is connected to the Internet, the IP address can change. This also allows the limited number of IPs to become reused, making it more convenient.

Broadband connections today lease IP addresses and use the DCHP dynamic IP address system. This system is also often considered safer, since the IP is always changing it makes it more difficult to hack the computer. Static IPs are commonly used by companies or people who require a similar IP address. The can apply for a static IP by paying a fee.

Comparison between Dynamic and Static IP:

	Dynamic IP	Static IP
Full form	Dynamic Internet Protocol	Static Internet Protocol
Definition	The internet protocol will constantly change	The internet protocol will remain the same
Cost Effective	More cost effective	Less cost effective
Security Risk	Lower	Higher
Upload/Download Speed	Slower	Faster
Good for	Good for residential user and small business owners	Web servers, email servers and other Internet servers. Also, for VOIP, VPN, playing online games or game hosting

SD-WAN can provide Quality of Service over the Internet

SD-WAN can provide Quality of Service (QoS) over the Internet

Organizations have tried to make voice services work over Internet Protocol (IP) network pipes (aka Voice over IP or VoIP), there have been very basic requirements in order to make it operate effectively. The first item needed for IP based voice was a dedicated, business class network line to carry this sensitive traffic. A business class circuit was paramount to reliability and uptime required for a crucial service like voice. This type of network access has low latency characteristics which keeps the amount of time it takes to forward the voice traffic low so that conversations are not made off kilter by long delays. Also absolutely critical to voice over network pipes is an additional layer over these high quality dedicated connections, something called quality of service or QoS. QoS is a suite of bandwidth prioritization and reservation techniques that give select services fast lane access to bypass lesser classifications of traffic and also reserves bandwidth preventing exhaustion of available throughput. Most commonly, QoS is used in tandem with carrier services like an IP VPN or Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and have been assumed by many to be the only way to reliably deliver voice services for an organization. I can affirm as a network engineer for the past few decades, this has been the case for most of my career. In order for voice to perform adequately, specific care was required to spec out dedicated pipes with prioritization and if you didn't, you were typically asking for trouble in the way of poor quality, disconnections and general voice issues. That is until a thing called Software Defined Wide Area Networks or SD-WAN came along. This nascent technology space is drastically changing the way we do a lot of things on the wide area network, including managing sensitive real-time protocols that require QoS.

Video quality can suffer if the network can’t meet its high bandwidth needs. Video conferencing can take on many forms and protocols. For enterprises that have experienced problems, such as delay and jitter on voice over IP platforms, you know some platforms are better than others. The big variance in supporting video conferencing requirements is the integrity of traffic over wide-area connections.

Let's take a look at some of the things that make SD-WAN different versus how we've implemented voice over traditional networks up until now. These are items that are truly differentiators from means we used in the past to run network traffic over both tried and true dedicated lines not to mention over the commodity broadband or specifically configured Dedicated Internet pipes.

1.   Multi-Path Steering - SD-WAN can actively forward over multiple lines and is constantly measuring the characteristics and properties of each path available. Because it can very rapidly identify issues like high latency, packet loss and jitter, there are software mechanisms to quickly bypass these issues by utilizing an alternate path on the fly.

2.   Forward Error Correction and/or Packet Duplication - When issues like data loss from dropped packets arise, if there is only one path available or all paths are experiencing loss, that can be a serious issue with traditional networks with little means to remediate. SD-WAN employs features such as Forward Error Correction (FEC) or Packet Duplication which once packet loss is identified on a path, will send duplicates of the same packet to have greater assurance that critical data like voice or video will make it to their destination. At the other side of the SD-WAN connection for that voice or video stream, the first packet received will be sent along and the duplicates will be dropped.

3.   Jitter Buffering - Voice and video quality can suffer from a network condition called "jitter" which is when the information sent over the network is spaced inconsistently leading to a variable tempo for the stream. The result is audio or video that can have gaps, speed up then slow down and generally become impaired. SD-WAN measures the gaps between the packets and can evenly space these packets on the other side providing what is called a "jitter buffer" to realign the timing of these packets to keep the video or audio stream cadence intact.

4.   Prioritization and Queuing over Multiple Paths - Because SD-WAN performs it's queuing and packet forwarding over something called an "overlay", the forwarding decisions for information that has the highest priority and reservation of bandwidth for applications is performed at a layer above the traditional IP interface. With this, a priority "fast pass" can be given to crucial data like voice, video or other business essential apps bi-directionally and this can be done over all paths available.

So as you can see, there are many pieces that come together to make IP based voice over broadband and Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is now possible. WAN Dynamics has designed many SD-WAN based solutions for customers and has seen it perform in the "real world" so can attest that IT WORKS! 

The following are some of the more prominent examples of reasons for SD-WAN we've been able to assist with to date:

1.   Voice Services Over the Internet - A lot of small to medium sized businesses have started utilizing voice services over commodity broadband connections with no Quality of Service (QoS) in place. Though most of the time this works adequately, there will be many instances of degradation in quality or dropped calls that can be frustrating. This has just been the reality of utilizing the public Internet for voice services... up until now. With SD-WAN, we're able to prioritize voice traffic both inbound and outbound while leveraging multi-path technologies to "route around" carrier backbone problems. We're able to do this with single, stand alone sites in addition to multiple locations.

2.   WAN Visibility and Management - Setting aside the benefits of multi-path link steering, bandwidth aggregation and QoS for a bit, many organizations have no usage breakdowns or application performance visibility in their network today. As a byproduct of the application steering and prioritization baked into most SD-WAN solutions, there is a great deal of reporting functionality available. So now when stakeholders of IT want to know what is happening at their remote locations, they have a graphical interface to see exactly what is happening.

3.   Configuration Uniformity and Standardization - Large organizations which have many sites or will soon have many sites at the hands of rapid growth can have a lot of hands in the IT group working on things. With this, lack of standardization becomes an issue as sites are configured and turned up if there is not a uniform configuration policy. With SD-WAN, attaining a high level of uniformity is simple using features like Zero Touch provisioning and Configuration Profiles to make sure that all sites are configured identically. This also helps greatly for change management if you want to make a configuration update to all of your locations. With this approach, you can update a configuration in one place and push it to all sites, instantaneously. This frees up engineers to solve larger problems facing the business rather than making a minor configuration change on dozens or hundreds of sites.

4.   Remote Diagnostics Capabilities - When there are issues at a remote location, it can often times be difficult to walk users through providing troubleshooting assistance or getting the right software and hardware onsite. With the built in tools into many SD-WAN solutions, the ability to perform packet captures, see network state and what the users see on the network, so that the time vetting issues on the network can be greatly reduced.

5.   MPLS / IP VPN Replacement - MPLS and other dedicated private network infrastructures have begun to outlive their usefulness with many organizations as critical workloads are moved to the cloud. Further, there is growing demand by companies to reduce cost of their expensive WANs that typically have no redundancy or application smarts built in. SD-WAN can easily leverage existing dedicated internet access (DIA) links and even inexpensive broadband connections to build an application aware, private network overlay that provides more applications control, redundancy and critical business application prioritization than traditional network designs.

These are just five examples of things we have been able to help with. We're happily conducting Proof of Concept deployments for businesses to show the value of SD-WAN and finding new use cases all the time.

"By the end of 2019, 30% of enterprises will have deployed SD-WAN technology in their branches, up from less than 1% today."