Which technology suits you best?
Technology is changing our lives much faster than we get to understand them. Most often, we can no longer understand the difference between useful engineer solutions and marketing rubble.
Technology is changing our lives much faster than we get to understand them. Most often, we can no longer understand the difference between useful engineer solutions and marketing rubble.
CCTV is no longer closed
Closed Circuit Television, CCTV — is a TV system recording audio and visuals on a privately maintained closed circuit. This definition was relevant until a gradual transition to digital signal processing, first in the DVRs, and later in cameras themselves. Surveillance cameras learned to transmit video over local computer networks using the TCP/IP protocol stack. At the same time, engineers organized remote access to “live” and “archived” videos via the global Internet — wherever you physically are.
The widespread use of local computer networks allows using customer’s infrastructure when engineering IP video surveillance. This fact simplifies maintenance and reduces installation costs.
What is the purpose of the cloud?
The use of the global Internet for video transmission has expanded the range of tasks that can be solved with a video surveillance system. At the same time, low prices on equipment made video surveillance truly accessible to everyone.
Today, even the most ordinary person can watch his apartment, home or business facility right on the screen of his smartphone or through a web browser.
This became possible thanks to the widespread use of another great technology – the so-called “cloud”. Cloud services allowed users to avoid difficult setup of the network equipment.
What is the difference between P2P and VSaaS?
It seems a reasonable question to ask: if P2P and VSaaS are both cloud technologies, then what is the difference? Why P2P technology is usually free for the user, while VSaaS implies an additional fee and a regular one?
P2P as a free bonus to hardware
In most cases, P2P doesn’t require additional investments. The technology itself is quite simple – P2P stands for peer-to-peer – i.e. it is peer-to-peer network, in which video is transmitted from a video surveillance camera directly to the user’s device. P2P server is used only to initiate this transfer — the camera (knowing the IP address of the P2P server) sends its IP address and other data necessary to initiate the communication channel to the server. In turn, the server transmits this data to the user’s device and no longer participates in the process. As you can see, one server can easily serve several clients. Thus, its efficiency maintenance per client is inexpensive and this price is simply included in the price of equipment
Aside from the price, this technology has a few other advantages:
- a free service implies that the manufacturer does not bear responsibility for its performance – providing its operation “as it is”. The manufacturer makes money not on the P2P service, but on the sale of equipment. Therefore, it is profitable for him to reduce the costs of managing P2P infrastructure and developing mobile applications and web services. Numerous P2Ps were created for one purpose – to tick the box in a leaflet “we have a cloud”
- As a rule, P2P servers do not have a decent fault-tolerance system; therefore, your application is often “on hold” or doesn’t work
- P2P service basically cannot provide a backup service in the cloud – its servers perform a much simpler task – to connect a camera with a user’s device
- P2P service is designed for a point-to-point operation scheme, which means it cannot provide multi-subscriber access to one camera
Real VSaaS
The VSaaS abbreviation stands for “Video Surveillance as a Service”. This technology assumes a completely different logic of VSaaS services operation compared to P2P servers. The camera and the end user no longer work directly, while the server acts as a “mediator”. It collects one stream from a video surveillance camera, if necessary, records it to a distributed storage system, converts the received stream to the width of the end-user channel and sends video streams in the number of authorized users assigned to one camera. Such camera can even be public – VSaaS services have their own web media player, which is easily integrated into the company’s website or a private person’s blog to broadcast video from the surveillance camera to an unlimited number of users simply via a web browser, to any device. In this case, the entire load falls on VSaaS service server, rather than on the camera itself. No camera could withstand more than 2-3-5 users, while the arrays of video servers in a cloud service can “gather” the missing power from the web hosting service. Thus, they can withstand even tens of thousands of simultaneous connections. We have cameras with a high load; several thousand users simultaneously view video from such cameras.
Main advantages of VSaaS:
- it is the main business for providers; they are responsible for the quality of provided paid services
- reliability of the service is provided by the rental of servers in reliable data centers certified by international classification
- since all traffic goes through the VSaaS server – providers can offer numerous additional services, the main of which is a cloud backup of the local archive (which reduces the likelihood of data loss due to equipment failure at the facility or theft of the local archive
- VSaaS services encrypt all transmitted traffic: from the camera to the servers, and from the servers to the end user
- VSaaS servers are able to withstand almost any influx of users watching video from the same camera. This means you can solve completely new video surveillance tasks – for example, make cameras public for marketing purposes.
What is cheaper – local or cloud storage?
Unfortunately, VSaaS is definitely not about saving. The cost of the cheapest video surveillance equipment tends to “0” (just like its quality and reliability). It’s not entirely correct to talk about savings through the absence of a DVR or a server on site. Moreover, the objective problem of the channel width from the video surveillance camera to the VSaaS server does not allow using cloud video surveillance at large sites where protection is a priority. However, in recent years the quality of communication channels in Thailand has improved significantly, while its cost has significantly decreased.
Therefore, VSaaS has nothing to do with saving. VSaaS – is primarily about functionality and reliability.
Is it dangerous to store your private data on external servers?
It is no more dangerous than to store locally on your registrar/server, provided that the system is not isolated from the Internet. User data is transmitted and stored in an encrypted form. In this case, there is no specific hard drive – which can be removed from the VSaaS server – data are distributed across multiple servers, and even between different data-processing centers. Do VSaaS employees have access to your video? This is highly doubtful – after all, such a scandal (if it becomes public) will simply destroy the cloud service business.
Target audience of Cloud services
Basic patterns of using VSaaS:
- One camera – many users (public, to the developer’s site, to the pizzeria’s kitchen).
- One-two-three users and many small objects with 1-3 cameras. They are constantly opened/closed, monitored by the company owner and his managers, not the security guard. There can be from 100 to 1000 cameras – the business is flexible. A company might constantly open and close new points. When everything is changing constantly, the customer needs an easily scalable solution with predictable costs and no capital investments in the infrastructure
- Multi-point access. For example, private kindergartens, where parents need easy access to the video. The list of users is constantly changing: new children come to kindergarten, others leave it. In this case, the administration constantly cuts off access of the former users (parents) and provides access to the new ones. Parents should be allowed to watch videos online, while the administration also needs access to the archive. All this implies certain difficulties with access rights. The service fee is divided between a bunch of people and is almost unnoticeable compared to the fee for childcare.
Chose VSaaS if…
You have few cameras on one site and the video surveillance is not used for security purpose – you use it to control your business operations, provide additional services or for marketing purposes. Choose VSaaS if you need a convenient backup system and you are ready to pay a monthly fee for this convenience.
Chose P2P if…
You need remote access to the video from surveillance cameras and the archive only occasionally and you are willing to accept the instability of the application functionality.
Conclusions
There are different cloud solutions for video surveillance systems. Shareware P2P technology is suitable for unpretentious private users. More advanced VSaaS technology with a large number of additional functions and services is intended for network businesses and discerning private customers. The main difference between those technologies is how video is transmitted. If it is transmitted directly from the camera to the user’s device – it is a simple P2P technology providing unstable remote access to the video. If the stream goes from the camera to the server, where it is processed and transmitted to the users’ devices – it is a VSaaS technology. Such service implies additional fee, but in turn, it provides several additional features: multi-subscriber access, cloud data storage, data encryption, and fault-tolerance service.
Make your choice. Do not forget to consult with specialists, as the simplicity of technology is very deceptive! Our contacts: 0-800-800-911 WhatsApp, Viber