Video management is the most important tool and can make or break the success of your video surveillance deployment. And what we’ve seen in our practice is that it’s such a new technology to the person responsible for implementation, that they are often challenged to find a solution when they don’t quite understand all of the intricacies involved in choosing a platforms.

This is why we’ve created a list of the top five things you should look for when investing in a video surveillance management platform.

1. Ease of use—from the system management perspective. The key functions of a VMS is to manage the behavior of the surveillance cameras—which camera’s work together, where they should point to when an event happens and who can see the data from which groups of cameras. Look for a VMS that enables camera grouping, user rights grouping (who can look at which cameras and which footage from those cameras), system-wide monitoring from “every pane of glass”, and a robust rules engine that allows you to customizes your data and access rules as needed. The right platform will save you hundreds of hours of work over less expensive and robust systems.

2. Ease of use—from the end user perspective. Once you’ve deployed your VMS and done that well, the success of city or department-wide adoption of the platform will largely depend on the ease of use for the end-user, both in the operations center and out in the field. Here are some things you should consider. Is it a clean interface without distractions? Users of the VMS need to be focusing on the images coming through, not on distractions delivered by the VMS. How much system resources does the VMS use on end user devices? You’ll want a fast and light interface that uses low system resources on portable devices such as laptops, tablets or cameras with very little memory or hard disk space. Your VMS needs to have flexible camera viewing so that your end users can get the best possible angles and it should have multiscreen support. Finally a great VMS will have an intelligent, optimized workflow built in, optimized workflow that makes it easy to find, retrieve, export and hand off video when needed.

3. Security. The end-goal of most video surveillance footage is to use that footage for prosecutor purposes. Because of complex “chain-of-evidence” laws, the gathering and distribution of video footage must adhere to strict guidelines. In order to protect theses chain of evidence guidelines, your VMS should come with a few key security features. First you should be able to encrypt exported video and then digitally sign the exported video for tracking purposes. Finally, you should be able to export your video in to a priority format with an embedded player and lock down the original video once it’s been exported. Granular user rights, proprietary formatting and “lock downs” help to keep video pure and out of the reach of others to reduces mass distribution (i.e. YouTube) of crucial evidence.

4. Open Platform.  After several years, VMS solutions are now becoming commonplace. Most people understand them and there are some true market leaders. What people are finally understanding is that video camera networks combined with VMS can bring to the table so many more things that simply recording video and spending hours culling though all of that content.  In the last two years there has been an enormous upswing in add-on application that move these systems from a complex, reactive tool  to an easy to use, pro-active crime fighting solutions. Integration with numerous camera manufacturers, device manufacturers, and 3rd party applications such as Hawkeye, Briefcam, Agent VI  have made things like gun-fire detection, license plate recognition and culing though hours of video in less than 10 minutes a possibility.  However, in order for these applications to be useful, your VMS must be an open platform with open APIs. If your VMS cannot easily integrate with other solutions, your surveillance network applications will be limited.

5. Migration Path. Finally, question the migration path of your VMS. Most initial deployments of a video surveillance network are small and limited in scope.  Because of this, you may only want to pay for an entry-level VMS solution. Which is fine, initially.  But as the number of networked devices expand, the number applications grow and the number of users increase, you’ll need to upgrade your VMS.  Make sure that what you are buying today can grow with your network to avoid forklift upgrades and retaining of staff.

There are a number of VMS solutions available on the market today. WLANmall has helped many cities, schools, local law enforcement agencies and large agencies create surveillance clouds as well as more complex distributed deployments using the Milestone XProtect software. We’re here to help if you have questions during your evaluation.

For your video surveillance networks, network switches become critical because video traffic is so sensitive to delays and network conditions. Without adequate management of video traffic, most video can be unreadable when received by those who need to view and store the images. Since network switches are critical to your video surveillance network, we’ve created a list of the top five criteria you should evaluate before making your purchase decision.

1. Do you need Managed or Unmanaged? Unmanaged Ethernet switches are simple connectivity devices that provide no configuration interface, network management, or control over data flow. They are generally used for networks in which data prioritization is not a concern and overall data traffic and the number of connected devices is low. They are simply a traffic director telling your data where to go and are perfect for network situations that don’t require monitoring of devices or traffic.

Managed Ethernet switches provide key features often required for video networks, including quality of service and VLANs. Video traffic quality is sensitive to latency and jitter and, at the same time, uses a significant amount of bandwidth. By implementing quality of service (QoS) for traffic prioritization, managed switches help ensure that video packets have the low latency and reduced jitter that video traffic needs. QoS is used to identify important traffic on the network to give it right of way or priority. In addition, managed switches provide the ability to monitor each device on the network, and they also can limit the amount of bandwidth any device can use. So, depending on the bandwidth you have available, the number of devices, and the amount of traffic you’ll have going over the network, a managed network switch is a better choice if you need your network and networked devices run more effectively, efficiently and intelligently.

2. Understand Power over Ethernet (PoE) and your requirements. For video surveillance networks, your network switch will need to support PoE. PoE, is a technology that allows a single cable to provide both data connection and electrical power to the devices on your network, such as IP video cameras and even wireless nodes. When evaluating PoE switches, remember to evaluate the true power available. For instance, although a switch may have eight ports, the overall PoE power budget for that switch may not be enough to support the power draw for a camera or other device on every port. You will need to calculate and plan a full evaluation of what type of devices will be connected to the switch and their individual power draws.

3. Determine how much speed you need. Network switches come in a variety of speeds to support the amount of traffic and the QoS you need on your network.  With an incremental increase in speed, of course, comes an incremental cost in the network switch you purchase. Based on the data traffic you have coming over the network, you need to determine what Ethernet speed your switch needs to support.  Fast Ethernet supports 100 Megabits per second per second, gigabit Ethernet (GbE) supports a traffic rate of one gigabit per second (Gbps) and 10 gigabit Ethernet supports 10 Gbps. Planning the purchase of your switch requires thorough planning of your traffic needs both now and in to the future.

4. Redundancy in your network and Ethernet switches. If your data is critical and guaranteed network uptime is a must, you may need more redundancy in your network and your network switches. Basic redundancy sits within the network switch and includes functions such as redundant power supplies, link fail-over, and the ability to “stack” switches. Within the network design, you should also look at the functions such link fail-over between switches and dynamic camera assignments in case one segment of the network goes down.

5. Manufacturer Support. Finally, a very practical thing to analyze is the level of support that your switch manufacturer supports. When a network switch goes down, you’ll want and need immediate resolution.  Check what type of phone support your manufacturer or system integrator have, what type of web support is available–and even check user forums to see if your proposed vendor or SI are active to solve the most common problems.

Your network switch will help you minimize data loss, create network flexibility and future-proof your network. It’s a key component of any video surveillance network.  Spend the time to thoroughly evaluate the key metrics we’ve outlined above, and you’ll be making a wise investment for your video surveillance system.

As you evaluate which video storage solution is best for your deployment, here are five (5) suggested criteria to evaluate so you can make the right choice for your network and staff.

1. Availability: Availability of your storage solution should be of paramount concern and it depends on a number of factors and components within each device. Do your recordings need to be safeguarded?  What would happen if there were any failures on your network? Although usually guaranteed through redundancy within the system, availability comes at a price.  Depending on environmental factors, the importance of the data and access to the unit, redundancy can be a very important factor.  Some of components that can have redundant options, again at a cost, include the controllers, dual power supplies, and redundant connections to the network.

2. Connectivity: What network environment are you putting your video storage solution and what type of connection will you require?  Fibre Channel, or FC, is a high-speed network technology is used specifically for storage. Until recently, FC was considered the primary choice, with low latency, high reliability for data storage networks.  FC is also complex and costly. Today, iSCSI has become a solid and popular option in storage environments. iSCSI is a much less expensive alternative, and it uses industry-standard Ethernet as its underlying communications fabric which will already be pervasive in your network environment. If you do not have a high speed network, you can direct attach your storage device to your recording server using a SAS cable. While not as scalable, direct attached serial attaches SCSI (SAS) performs well and is less complex than their networked counterparts.

3. Storage Capacity: There are several criteria you need to review before deciding the storage capacity required for your storage device.  How many cameras will be feeding the unit? What is the frame rate of the video you’ll be capturing? What compression algorithm (IE H264) will you be using? At what bit rate? Your answers to all these questions will affect the capacity you’ll require just to handle the incoming video feeds. You’ll need to understand your triggers for recording.  Do you only record when a specific type of event occurs (motion) or is it an always-on set up? How often and how long the recording plays will also affect how much storage capacity you’ll need. Finally, you’ll need to determine how long you’ll be keeping the video feed. Can you clear content daily, weekly, monthly–or do you need to keep it forever? (We’ll address expansion in criteria #4.)  To help you with design the appropriate solution around your needs, AXIS Communication has designed a really cool design tool, available at http://www.axis.com/us/en/tools/axis-design-tool.

4. Expandability: As discussed above, once you discover that your storage system may have ever-growing requirements, you may need to look at the expandability of your storage solution.  If you need to expand, what will your migration path look like?  Are you comfortable with long-term, fork-lift upgrades because you don’t see your needs growing by leaps and bounds? This is an option. However, if you think your data storage requirements are going to grow at a steady pace, then you will need to look at how you want to grow the system itself. As an example, some SAN devices, like Dell EqualLogic allows you to manage multiple units as one large storage pool–just add another rack and management combines it. In contrast, some systems like Synology have a head/main unit which support simple storage shelves to add capacity to the main unit.

5. IOPS: Finally, you need to understand how much speed you need on your storage system. IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) is the standard unit of measurement for the maximum number of reads and writes to storage device.  Measuring both IOPS and latency can help a network administrator predict how much load a device can handle without performance being negatively affected. On a surveillance network, the more cameras you have, the higher the IOPS is needed on the storage server. If your storage device cannot keep up with the IOPS it is receiving, media overflow errors will occur. This will cause dropped frames which will, in turn, affect the quality of the video being stored—no matter how good your camera and network connections are.

Determining which video surveillance storage device you use on your network can be a complicated, costly decision.  Hopefully the questions asked and the information in these criteria will aid you in your research.  If you need additional support, leading storage integrators, such as WLANmall, can help you make independent evaluations of the best solution for your network.

WLANmall, a leading reseller and integrator of end-to-end wireless solutions, has bundled the best products from leading vendors to create cost-effective, easy-to-manage Wi-Fi networks for schools and school districts. To ease the burden of designing the networks, WLANmall has created suggested product bundles that include Wi-Fi access points, wireless network switches and the ever-important security devices and firewalls needed for intrusion detection and access management. Our suggested vendors include Ruckus wireless, Brocade, Sophos, and Cambium Networks.

To further assist schools, WLANmall has created a helpful guide with useful instructions, links to forms, tools and tricks to help them through the E-rate application and funding process. The guide and bundle suggestions can be found at http://www.wlanmall.com/e-rate.

Here at WLANmall, we’re excited about Milestone Systems new license plate recognition software XProtect LPR 2015, now available for the their Milestone XProtect® video management software suite and Milestone Husky™ NVR range. This software reads license plate information from vehicles and links the information to the corresponding surveillance video.

The 2015 edition is easier to deploy, offers more extensive geographical coverage and enables greater customization. Here are some of the new features that help both integrators and end users use this exciting technology:

• Easier configuration and high recognition accuracy with a new, snapshot-driven tuning process
This latest version of XProtect LPR features a new, snapshot-driven configuration wizard that guides system integrators through the configuration process and ensures high recognition accuracy.
• Customizable match lists and wildcard list matching
Administrators can now link additional vehicle, driver or owner information to a license plate. It also supports wildcards in license plate list matching, enabling users to identify a specific set of actions for all license plates containing a particular sequence of letters or numbers, making it ideal for managing fleet vehicles.
• Extended geographical coverage of License Plate Recognition
13 new country-optimized modules, including Belarus, the Philippines, Honduras and Vietnam have now been added for a total of over 100 covered countries and states.
• More thorough documentation of recognized vehicles with the new XProtect LPR report
XProtect LPR 2015 also introduces a new reporting function enabling a user to fully document recognized vehicles based on user-defined search and filtering criteria. The comprehensive PDF report includes a video thumbnail of the recognized vehicle, close up of the license plate, match list information and details about the detection time.

WLANmall is Milestone Systems Regional Partner of the year for 2015.  With years of experience integration and management of Milestone System products, we can help shopping centers, parking structures, police departments and other government agencies with their video capture, communication and management needs.

Axis Communications recently announced its first corner-mount fixed network camera. The new AXIS Q8414-LVS features a stainless steel anti-grip casing and is extremely impact resistant. Specifically developed for correctional facilities as well as in psychiatric wards, the Q8414 was designed to prevent self-harm and avoid internal conflicts. The sleek corner design lacks ligature points and the anti-grip surface prevents gripping on to the camera during conflicts.

Example of applications would include video surveillance of small rooms in premises like correctional facilities, interview rooms, psychiatric wards, and medical observation rooms as well as elevators and stairwells. Axis designed AXIS Q8414-LVS to feature as few cavities and holes as possible so prisoners and patients cannot stuff anything inside them and eases to cleaning.

The Q8414 has a 1.3 Megapixel or HDTV 720p video stream with P-Iris control and a horizontal angle of view up to 105° covers the entire room without blind spots. With to a built-in microphone and the ability to integrate a networked alarm system via its I/O port, it easily becomes part of the overall surveillance solution

We’ve seen a lot of initial interest in this camera for our municipal correctional facilities.  The Q8414 is just more tool in WLANmalls arsenal that help city and county jailers cope with their daily challenges. To find out more about the Axis Q8414, click here.

• Throughput Optimization mode (5 ms frame size)
• 7MHz Channel Bandwidth for 3.5 and 3.65 radios
• Import/Export of Configuration Files
• Zero Touch Configuration
• SNMPv3, HTTPS, Ability to disable Telnet, FTP and TFTP
• Read-Only Accounts for Admin, Install, and Tech
• Sector Spectrum Analyzer
• Export of Sessions Status Page

Current owners of Cambium PMP / PTP 450 and 430 can download R13.3 here and the  13.3 Release Notes are located here.

With the recently released 01-40 software for PTP 650, network operators have more performance and flexibility in running their networks. Some of the key features include:

• Determine which channels are available for expanding your network. Wide-band, always-on spectrum analyzer provides real-time analysis of all channels between 4.9 GHz to 6.05 GHz. Results are displayed graphically in the GUI or available for offline analytics.
• Tailor the uplink/downlink capacity of PTP links to the payload/application. New TDD ratios enable adjustment from 50% to 83% Tx/Rx cycles.
• Add an additional camera or AP to a PTP link without adding a switch. Activate multiple physical ports on the PTP 650 and send data in a parallel virtual path without overhead of adding a switch.
• Many additional enhancements to performance and management.

Download v 01-40 now from the Cambium Support webpage. You can watch a video on this release and PTP 650 in general by clicking here.

POODLE, which stands for Padding Oracle On Downloaded Legacy Encryption, was found in SSL 3.0(Secure Sockets Layer), is the technology that encrypts a user’s browsing session, making it difficult for anyone using a public Wi-Fi network (Starbucks, McDonalds, etc) to eavesdropped on.

According to Google, an attacker that controls the network between the computer and server could interfere with the handshake process used to verify which cryptography protocol the server can accept using a “protocol downgrade dance”.

This will force computers to use the older SSL 3.0 protocol to protect data that is being sent. Attackers can then exploit the bug by carrying out a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack to decrypt secure HTTP cookie and enable them to hijack someone’s browsing session and do things like take over their email, online banking, or social networking account. To pull off an a Poodle attack the victim has to be actively online and physically close to the attacker — say, using the same public Wi-Fi.

In order to end users to protect your browsing, here are some suggested changes for the most common types of browsers:
• Google Chrome
• Microsoft Internet Explorer

For business managing their own servers, Security software firm Symantec recommends the following:
1. Check to see if your webservers are vulnerable using their free SSL Toolbox.
2. Use tools that support TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV, a mechanism that prevents attackers from forcing Web browsers to use SSL 3.0.
3. Disable SSL 3.0 altogether, or disable SSL 3.0 CBC-mode ciphers
4. Use a cloud-based Web Application Firewall can help protect against this kind of vulnerability

If you have any questions about POODLE, please feel free to email us at info@wlanmal.com.

Winter is soon upon us.  Boston has had its first Noreaster of the season and Chicago has already been hit with gale-force winds. So how do deliver highly available Gigabit throughput for distances of 3.5 miles in this inclement weather?

Siklu has created an extended range solution that creates an always-on, all-weather, extended range connection by combining any Siklu EtherHaul-1200 millimeter wave radio (1ft. antenna) with any previously-deployed sub-6 GHz radio.

Siklu’s ExtendMM™ is an extended range solution for all our wireless service providers operating over longer distances. With a single click you turn the two radios into a single high-performance long-distance link that delivers the capacity you need over the distance you require. For inclement weather, when a significant rain event happens, the ExtendMM™ solution automatically switches the high priority traffic, without dropping sessions, from the primary EtherHaul path to the sub-6 GHz path. As the rain cell passes, the link immediately returns to Gigabit speed. No additional networking equipment is needed and you can ensure guaranteed bandwidth and uptime to your customers during these inclement winter months.

If you have one of the following sub 6 GHz radios installed, ExtendMM creates a seamless solution using your installed equipment.

• Ubiquity
  • Bullet; NanoStation; NanoBridge
• MikroTik
  • SXT 5HPnD; GrooveA 52HPn; Metal 5SHPn; QRT 5
• TP Link
  • TL-WA7510N
• Radwin
  • Radwin 2000
• Cambium Networks
  • PTP series

To find out more on Siklu’s innovative products, go here.

Ruckus Wireless does a great job of discussing how their Adaptive Antenna technology has stood the test of time.  With the introduction of 802.11 ac, the notion that transmit beamforming (TxBF) with 11ac replaces the need for Smart Wi-Fi. This common misconception that smart, adaptive antennas—as proprietary Ruckus BeamFlex technology—and transmit beamforming—as a standards-based technology—are one-and-the-same. In this geeky, technical blog, Ruckus explains the differences in the two technologies. You can go to the Ruckus Blog to read more or watch the video on YouTube.