Looking for advice on multi-site solution

[cyrild]

Hi, first I'm sorry if this is the wrong section to post this thead, I don't now much things about the security camera world.

I'm working on an academic project where I need to design the entire network infrastructure of an hypotethical multi-site company.
This company got 20 site with 20 to 200 security camera in each site, with a bit more than 2000 camera in total.

I plan to have each site "sending" camera traffic to a remote server in a datacenter, and having all sites being able to access that server to view every camera (kind of a watch on demand service).

I used Bandwidth calculator - Opticom Technologies to plan my bandwidth usage (with 720x576 resolution and 12 ips i'm getting around 770mbps in total), so I now it won't be an issue.

Would you have any advice on which solution to choose that can achieve this (centralisation of camera traffic in a server, which can then be accessed by several sites as a watch on demand service) ?

I've look into some solution with DW, but it's really dense and I can't contact any support since I'm not really in a company. From what I understood, I would need to go with DW Spectrum Enterprise, where you need to buy a license for every camera you use (?), and for exemple a 100 camera pack Licencing (DW-SPECTRUMLSC100) would cost 12000$, witch seem extremely expensive so I'm not sure if I'm looking at the right thing.
I'd prefere a free and open-source solution, for exemple with ZoneMinder, but I'm not sure it is really made this much camera, and I'm not sure it fits my needs of sending all traffic to a remote server which can be accessible as a watch on demand service.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Some questions aimed at helping get constructive responses :

I'm working on an academic project where I need to design the entire network infrastructure of an hypotethical multi-site company.

Is this for camera traffic only, or other traffic also, if so what type?
Have you been given a hypothetical budget to work within?

I plan to have each site "sending" camera traffic to a remote server in a datacenter, and having all sites being able to access that server to view every camera (kind of a watch on demand service).

That would require the maximum bandwidth of any solution, and also provide multiple point of failure and potential performance problems.
Did you discount the option of having video recording at each site for their local cameras, if so why?
An NVR solution need not be expensive, and need not require a per-camera licence, depending on the choice.
Such a solution would still allow access from multiple external sites, with much lower bandwidth requirements, and less consequence should a link go down or perform poorly.

with 720x576 resolution and 12 ips

By current standards, that's an unusually low resolution, unlikely to be useful for recognition and identification of persons.
What does the project scope require that the cameras are capable of?

 

[cyrild]

Thanks for your response !
I'll try to answer the best as I can.

Is this for camera traffic only, or other traffic also, if so what type?
Have you been given a hypothetical budget to work within?

The camera traffic is only a part of the project, other traffic include usual company traffic like access to internet, VoIP, access to company's internal service (nextcloud, exchange, sage...).

That would require the maximum bandwidth of any solution, and also provide multiple point of failure and potential performance problems.
Did you discount the option of having video recording at each site for their local cameras, if so why?

I planned the storage for the whole company to be centralized in datacenters, and replicated to other places for backup.
Since I also want to backup camera recording for a few days, it seemed easier to just store it in the same place as the other datas.

An other reason was to reduce bandwidth requierement on sites : sending it all to a centralized storage in a datacenter means that you could have predictable bandwidth (you only send the traffic once). But if you store the camera recording and make it being available from the site, if you have 5 other surveillance PC that want to access the camera traffic at the same time, then you need to send the traffic 5 times.

Also storing the camera recording on each site seems more vulnerable than storing it externaly in a datacenter.
If a fire happens for exemple and burn the whole site, or if someone breaks into the site and destroy the evidence in the local storage (very pessimistic exemples), you wouln't be able to figure out how it happened. But if you stored everything externaly you would at least have something to work with.

An NVR solution need not be expensive, and need not require a per-camera licence, depending on the choice.
Such a solution would still allow access from multiple external sites, with much lower bandwidth requirements, and less consequence should a link go down or perform poorly.

If I understand correctly, you would have an NVR at each site, storing camera recording of their own site, and then what ? How do you access NVR A on site A from site B ? Do you need to go through a centralized management unit, or can you simply have traffic going from surveillance PC on site B to NVR on site A ?

I'm allowed to present several options for my design.
So in the case where you can have your surveillance PC being able to access NVR on each site this would be a really good option to present.
This would drastically reduce bandwidth needs and maybe allow the camera video to use a higher resolution, which could add the use case of recognition and identification of persons like you said

Do you have any information on which solution/vendor can offer this ?

By current standards, that's an unusually low resolution, unlikely to be useful for recognition and identification of persons.
What does the project scope require that the cameras are capable of?

I don't have any requirements or guidance about this. The project just need to be coherent overall.
I figured this resolution would be enough to see what's happening in a particular place at a particular time, which seems like a valid use case for a security camera, while not using too much bandwidth.