Industrial Ethernet Advisory Group

The critical infrastructure security market is booming in new EU member states as these countries build new power plants and race to modernise air and sea ports. According to analysis from Frost and Sullivan, the market will grow steadily, reaching $2.2 billion by 2017, with peaks in 2011 and 2013, due to EU funding and procurement for energy and airport projects in the region.

The growth is being fuelled by both government funds and private investment. EU security regulation compliance requirements and the need for a common security strategy are other contributing factors.

Increasingly video surveillance systems are coming to rely on IP technology, and you can see the attraction. It’s a function of its massive, established installed base, and the fact that the technology is standardised, low cost and low risk. It is reliable, well understood and well supported.

But video traffic is high speed and high bandwidth, and that makes string requirements of the IP infrastructure devices that must handle it. The IP switches, for example, that provide connectivity to the cameras and route the data onto the Ethernet network must combine simple connectivity with the ability to handle demanding video traffic.

The ability to handle video traffic really does place a requirement on components to offer IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) software as standard. This is key, with modern high definition cameras transmitting at data rates as high as 5Mbps. This multicast traffic has to be effectively managed, to prevent unnecessary traffic flooding the various communications interfaces and bogging down the entire network. The IGMP protocol provides a means to manage this traffic.

Once you combine best off breed IP-based cameras with the power of IP-based network solutions and the flexibility of the latest wireless communications, then you have the basis of a very powerful surveillance system. Add in to that the software management facilities available to IP-based networks, and you have the potential for self-healing, redundant surveillance networks that slash the cost of support and maintenance.

Remote video monitoring is now forecast to be the fastest growing service within the remote monitoring market. The remote video market was worth nearly $250m across the Americas and EMEA in 2009, and is experiencing impressive growth which will continue to accelerate as the global economy recovers, says a new report from IMS Research.

Remote video monitoring has lots of advantages. Being able to monitor several facilities or areas from a single location maximises the area of coverage under surveillance, and makes it much easier to focus any response where it is required.

With these surveillance systems increasingly building on IP technologies, large quantities of Ethernet switches are supporting the expansion of the remote monitoring market, selected for their ability to deliver robust and reliable networks, to handle the demanding high-bandwidth traffic of multiple video cameras, and to withstand demanding environmental conditions without special protection. The switches frequently have to cope with extremes of temperature, resist the effects of humidity and be immune to corrosion.

A key advantage of today’s best of breed Ethernet switches is their support of IGMP as standard. Traditionally IGMP support has meant specifying costly Layer 3 routers and switches, but modern Layer 2 switches can now offer this, providing the required tight control of multicast video traffic. The need for multiple Layer 3 products is eliminated and overall costs are dramatically reduced.

It’s interesting how often a mass of emerging market requirements will converge to drive a technology in a particular direction. The video surveillance market is a good example. The big push in video analytics really calls for a shift to high definition cameras, at which point bandwidth becomes an issue. A big concern to installers is system reliability. For organisations looking to grab market share in an increasingly global business, ease of support on the ground is a key factor. And there is the high value that integrators and installers place on the likes of reliability, future proofing, ease of integration and, let it be said, price.

All of these issues are driving the market at full pelt towards IP-based video solutions, and this is rapidly becoming the de-facto standard in surveillance and security.

HD cameras have rapidly superseded traditional analogue products as the technology of choice in surveillance applications, for their vastly superior image quality. This is enabling a whole new raft of video analytics applications, providing anything from business intelligence for retail outlets to transport infrastructure planning. And next generation video surveillance systems will be networked, intelligent, multi-camera co-operating systems. But all of this has huge implications for bandwidth and data rates, and Ethernet provides the only realistic option.

The latest research from IMS highlights how reliability is another factor driving the decision to use IP-based security technology, with the survey of European integrators and installers also finding that customer requirements and the ability to future-proof installations were also important considerations. Further, a North American study identified as ease of training and availability of multi-vendor support as being key drivers to IP-based solutions.

The IP video surveillance and security market defied the global downturn of 2009, and actually grew by 3%. Growth for 2010 looks set to boom, with new players entering the sector, lower cost products coming to market, and big events such as the World Cup and the 2012 Olympics requiring ever greater infrastructure development and security spending. So it looks like being a very interesting couple of years.