What School IT Teams Should Know About Investing in Next-Generation Security Cameras

Next-generation video surveillance is shaking up the typical school IT infrastructure. Before video was encapsulated in IP, many school physical security teams kept their distance from in-building IT infrastructure and, instead, ran parallel data networks on campus as they migrated to Video over IP. Those days are rapidly ending as security camera networks merge with campus IT infrastructure.

As physical security teams start to deploy the next generation of surveillance cameras, IT teams need to get up to speed on these key changes to the technology and its use. Here’s what to look out for when working with physical security staff to scout next-generation cameras for campus security.

Why Do Schools’ Smarter Cameras Need Strong Bandwidth?
Next-generation security cameras can do a lot of processing on the camera itself, which has important implications not only for bandwidth use but also for cost and power consumption. Older cameras sent video continuously to network video recorders (NVRs). This created a constant load on the network, typically 4 megabits per second, per stream, with H.264 compression for standard Full HD 1080p (1920×1080) cameras. Now multiply these numbers by four for the newest 4K resolution cameras.

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