Case Studies

Road Transport Surveillance Networking
2007/07/03   Western Europe

The Transport Authority of a European country needed to link highway cameras with control rooms across distances of many kilometers.  The resulting network should be fast, secure and have the ability to reconnect quickly in the case of a fault or breach in one part of the network.

Key requirements - the four Rs

• Ruggedness

Placement of switches leads to exposure to extremes of temperature and humidity – the components of the network should be able to handle these extremes.

• Redundancy

A cut fiber or node failure in one part of the network should have no effect on other parts of the same network. 

• Reliability

Availability of service should be above 99.8% - critical operations require an incredibly stable system.

• Rapidity

With hundreds of data streams of high-quality video to deliver, speed is also of paramount importance.

A total of 600 IP streams are managed through a number of Gigabit Ring topology networks.  Durable, rugged and able to satisfy the high standards of the Transport Agency, our NSH-566 switches were the obvious choice in creating a network fitting the 99.8% availability criteria specified.  The ring topology enables data to be rerouted in the event of a fiber breakage, ensuring network availability even in cases of node failure.

In continuous operation since 2005, the combination of quality components and a network capacity of 14Gb/sec means the entire network is future-proof, with plenty of capacity for expansion both in terms of the number of nodes (control rooms and cameras) and the amount of data carried by the network.