Case Studies

Automating a Surveillance Network
2007/04/23   

Linking a Subway System’s IP cameras and DVR systems into one network

VOLKTEK delivers a solution that enables Gigabit Ring topologies and remote management

The Challenge:
The Metropolitan Transit Authority of a major Asian city needed to incorporate all the surveillance IP cameras in its far-flung train stations into one network. The solution also needed to link the cameras’ Digital Video Recording (DVR) systems – which record and store the video footage locally – to the control room. To avoid bandwidth bottlenecks, the devices needed to be connected via Gigabit link and this link needed to have a Gigabit Ring topology for link redundancy.

Ethernet to the rescue:
VOLKTEK’s NSH-561 Switch was the ideal station-side edge device because each switch can link to up to eight cameras and DVRs via 10/100TX cable. The switch then links to the Gigabit Ring topology (which links the switches to the control rooms) via two 1000T/SX/LX uplink ports. These Gigabit fiber ports extend the switch’s point-to-point transmission distance to up to 110km.
In this way the control personnel now have complete control over dozens of surveillance devices that are spread out over dozens of kilometers of subway lines (see diagram).

The Mission:
Link dozens of peripheral IP cameras and Digital Video Recording systems to centralized control rooms. The solution must enable 100Mbps edge aggregation to 1000Mbps Gigabit Rings and it must enable remote management.

Requirements:
The ability to aggregate 10/100Mbps data to 1000Mbps fiber-optic Gigabit Rings. Remote manageability.

Solution:
VOLKTEK’s NSH-561 Managed Switch can link 8 edge devices like IP cameras and DVRs via 10/100TX cable to a fiber Gigabit Ring. Each switch can be managed from a remote location via SNMP, Web and Telnet – and these management interfaces use user interfaces like GUI, Menu-driven and CLI. The 561’s two fiber Gigabit uplink ports are also interchangeable with two copper Gigabit ports.

Some features of the NSH-561:

• Eight 10/100Base-TX RJ-45 ports
• Two SFP slots
• Two 10/100/1000Base-T RJ-45 ports
• One RS-232 Console port (RJ-45)
• Spanning Tree Protocol
• Proprietary Xpress Ring protocol
• Automatic learning of up to 8K MAC addresses
• IGMP Snooping for multicast filtering
• Rate limitation
• Port lock
• Port-based MAC address quantity limitation
• Full VLAN (802.1q) with double tagging (Q in Q)
• Management VLAN  
• IPv4  QoS Management:
• Web-based GUI, SNMP, RMON, Telnet/Console, Menu-driven/Command Line
• User’s IP security control to prevent illegal access
• E-mail alarm warning
• Port configuration, status, statistics, security
• Loss of link management on fiber ports
• Port mirroring
• Power: 100 ~ 240VAC auto-ranging input / -48VDC option available / +12VDC Power option via terminal block