Can someone explain the basic of an ip camera system, or suggest a thread or article. I do a lot of analog but never played with ip. I guess you run cat 5, but does that go back to a NVR or computer, do you need software, what about switchers and routers, bandwith, blah blah blah. I read alot but do not understand. Maybe a basic drawing?

thanks

Hi,

You can start with a site maintained by Axis.


It makes good reading material, and should give some background information to IP video systems.

If I could summarize, an IP Video system will consist of the front end (IP Camera), with the transmission medium carrying video over the TCP/IP protocol, and being recorded into an industry server (eg. HP, Dell) running a video software. Of course, this is a 1-liner, but different manufacturers will define "IP Video" differently, in an attempt to differentiate their offerings.
(which invariably leads to confusion)

IP cameras are similar to digital cameras that send images over a network cable instead of to a memory card.

Images are sent in multiple IP packets tagged with a destination address. You can think of switches/routers as post offices that receive all the packets and forward them through the right cable, because it learns which addresses are accessible trough which cable.

If you have an 8-port switch, you can connect 7 cameras with 7 cables, and use the last cable to connect a computer with NVR software. You can also connect multiple switches together, and as long as IP camera packets can follow a path from switch to switch all the way to an NVR, then the NVR will be able to know which camera address it comes from and will be able to record the images. Depending on the bandwidth of your cameras (the sum of all cameras), you may want to use a 100Mbit or 1000Mbit (Gigabit) link to your NVR. Given current prices, it is probably safer to go with Gigabit switches to make sure you have plenty of bandwidth, unless you have very few cameras.

An NVR can also be an appliance, but it is usually a normal computer/server with software that handles storage and can allow access by other remote computers. Typically, an NVR is connected to both a camera network and an external network through which client computers can access the recorded data.

Hopefully that's helpful!