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.