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How to choose a suitable network switch for IP surveillance systems. First, focus on backbone full wired speed, PoE capability, and testing capabilities.

“What are the most important facts and pointers when choosing a suitable network switch for IP surveillance systems?” The video network specialist needs to focus on switch network speed, PoE compatibility, and quality assurance testing in needed by their organization.

The rapid development within modern IP technology hasn’t evaded the security industry. IP surveillance systems are becoming more and more popular and 2014 will be a historic year since this is the year when the CCTV and video surveillance market will come to a “tipping point,” with revenue for network video overtaking analog for the first time ever, according to a new report entitled “The World Market for CCTV and Video Surveillance Equipment” from IMS Research.

In other words, an increasing number of new surveillance projects are now completely IP-based and they need qualitative network equipment to work properly. There are a lot of different network peripherals on the market, but a main question is: how do you choose and use them efficiently to ensure your system reaches the maximum performance in every operating environment?

All available image monitoring and traffic processing capabilities of a device can and should of course always be tested in the hunt for optimized performance. However, these assessments of different types of IT devices have to be done correctly in order for the output data to provide critical information on the device capabilities. Here we examine the commonly heard of “backbone full wired speed” and “PoE capability” to see how these functions should be defined and tested.

Key Product ? Switches:
One large product group that is important to know about when setting up a camera system for IP surveillance is switches. A network switch, or switching hub, is a computer networking device that connects network segments. The network switch plays an integral part in most modern Ethernet local area networks (LANs), and a network can have more than one switch.

The switch only sends data to the receiver that is supposed to have access to the given information. In this way, a network doesn’t overload when data is sent. It also means higher security as it is hard to gain access to information not meant for another computer.

Switch Performance:
Non-blocking and wired-speed both refer to the performance of an Ethernet switch. With a 24 port 10/100/1000 switch, if each port is 2G in full duplex mode, then 24 ports means the device is a 48G switch. When this volume of data is passed through the switch, the switch performance can be categorized as non-blocking or wired speed.

If the switch is connected to another switch, or to a server that uses network storage or transfers, then non-blocking is essential. Yet, how this is accomplished is up to the vendor’s switch design. The user can only rely on the data provided by the vendor.

Otherwise, the user must test the switch’s capability using tools such as Spirent Testcenter Smartbits. It is not possible to derive the switch’s capability from just the port configuration.

Learn more about integrating the appropriate networking switch technology into your video surveillance infrastructure at EtherWan’s website.