Comtrol Now Issue Three

The Center of the IP Video Puzzle

The video surveillance market is undergoing a great deal of change as companies move away from analog cameras, replacing them with IP cameras. More and more companies are moving to this technology for its many advantages over traditional analog cameras.

The three most significant advantages that IP Video has over analog camera systems are image quality, single cable infrastructure, and flexibility. IP cameras offer high performance image quality featuring progressive scan video and Megapixel feeds, delivering crisp and clear images. Single cable infrastructure provides the ability to use current network infrastructure for video and audio, power, and PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom). Using IP video also creates a great amount of flexibility. The cameras use open standards, allow for remote access from any internet connection, and allow for camera intelligence to be programmed on the camera.

There are six main components to an IP Video system: IP cameras, server, storage device that saves the video, viewing client, Ethernet cabling used to connect the cables, and an Ethernet switch. The switch is the center of the IP Video system puzzle. It connects the cameras to the server, passes the data to the storage device and the viewing client, and provides the power to operate the cameras.

IP Video cameras run off of standard Ethernet Cat 5e/6 cables that most companies already have throughout their buildings for their local area network (LAN). In addition to using standard Ethernet cable for sending and receiving data, the cameras are also powered over that same cable. This technology is referred to as Power over Ethernet (PoE).

Power over Ethernet was created to deliver power to devices over a standard Ethernet connection. There are two main standards used with PoE. The first and most common standard is IEEE 802.3af, of which delivers a device with 15.4 watts of power. The standard IEEE 802.3at, allows power from 0 to 30 watts to be delivered to the appropriate devices.

Comtrol is proud to announce that we have designed a Power over Ethernet switch for the IP video market. The RocketLinx ES7506 is a 6 port Managed Ethernet switch with 4 PoE ports. It supports intelligent PoE control and schedule management. Each of the four PoE ports can be configured in a weekly schedule by hourly basis and the PoE on/off can be remotely controlled via SNMP and a Web Interface.

It is compliant to both IEEE 802.3af PoE, as well as the current IEEE 802.3at standard known as PoE Plus, which is designed for boosting PoE delivery up to 30W in each of the four PoE ports.

In addition to being able to provide both PoE and PoE Plus power to four devices, it has strong switch management features. The ES7506 has two uplink ports that can be configured to use Comtrol’s Redundant Ring protocol which can recover from network failure in less than 5ms, or the RSTP protocol integrating with other standard switches. It also offers full network management features such as SNMP v3, QoS, and IGMP.

The ES7506 also provides a redundant power supply input. This essential feature allows for users to connect the secondary power input to a UPS so the switch and cameras being powered remain functional during a power outage. An additional feature of the ES7506 will reboot a powered device if it fails to respond after a pre-configured time interval, and will continue to monitor the powered device in every pre-configured time interval.

The product comes in an IP-31 rigid aluminum flat casing with a very small footprint and has a wide operating temperature range (-25° to 60° C) ensuring reliable operation in places such as mass transit vehicles or outdoor usage.

For more information on the RocketLinx ES7506 or any of our new RocketLinx Ethernet switches, please contact the Comtrol sales team for information, pricing, or an evaluation unit.

Written by Rob Iten