What is TCP/IP Networks

Traditional analog video surveillance systems technology has recently become inadequate to face the massive demand of security systems consisting of hundreds and sometimes thousands of cameras often deployed in hostile environments miles away from the control room. During the last few years, the rapid growth of the digital technology has produced sophisticated cameras which can directly record highdefinition digital videos. The packetized video stream can be straightforwardly conveyed to the control room, relaying on common IP network infrastructures. This solution result is extremely flexible as the network infrastructure can be built over a wide variety of heterogeneous network technologies from the traditional Ethernet-based Local Area Networks (LANs) to the recently proposed Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). However, the widespread adoption of IP-based solutions for video surveillance poses serious problems in terms of required bandwidth, processing power, network security, and system dependability. In this chapter, we first investigate the advantages of the IP-based video surveillance systems over the traditional analog ones. Then, we describe the technical challenges and the open research issues which still lack an ultimate solution which permits to completely abandon the traditional analog technology. Finally, we propose and verify, by means of a case study, a methodology to address the design of video surveillance systems in real deployment.