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The topography options of today's IP video recording systems are as diverse as the needs of the organizations using the systems. For a security systems integrator tasked to design the most appropriate and cost-effective solution, the architecture of the system must be the right selection in order to remain suitable for many years to come.

Decisions are based on a variety of factors, some of which include available bandwidth, budget, maintenance requirements, the use of the video, storage requirements as well as the comfort level of depending on the network for the IP video system.

Typically the driving force behind the architecture is where the video will be recorded. This is because this choice forces the key questions of available bandwidth, network reliability, larger shared or smaller dedicated storage, storage reliability and system redundancy. Despite the a (growing) array of possibilities, one of the first major decisions to be made by an integrator during system design is to choose from two major camps: whether to employ a centralized, Network Video Recorder (NVR) solution or a more decentralized approach that used to be addressed by DVRs but now has alternatives including encoders with embedded storage and distributed autonomous iSCSI-based disk arrays. Unlike NVRs, these disk arrays do not use PCs.

Traditionally, NVR-based, centralized recording systems have been favored for a number of reasons, including reducing the cost of storage, which can account for anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of the overall expense of a system. Centralizing the use of storage means the ability to capitalize on economies of scale because hundreds of cameras are able to share highly reliable, large capacity RAID storage arrays.

In addition, locating the recording media and other devices in one environmentally controlled and restricted-access location provides an advantage for maintenance as well as for the security of the equipment itself. Such isolation is common and recommended, including airports, power plants, correctional facilities, education, gaming and government.

Transporting all video to a central location for recording creates great dependency on the network and highlights the main weakness with centralized recording - any interruption in the network means you lose the ability to record video. Not only does this approach demand continuously high bandwidth requirements, it's also reasonable to expect some scheduled, as well as unscheduled downtime, despite the reliability of modern network switches that make an actual LAN failure rare.

Alternatively, using a decentralized system for edge recording can offers many advantages. In the simplest situation, the storage medium -- solid state or hard disk -- is built into the unit. A typical example would be a multichannel encoder, such as a unit with 8 video channels and with up to 1TB of hard disk storage built in to a compact rack unit. At first glance, this may sound reminiscent of the humble DVR, but in actuality we're talking about is a fully equipped encoder with all the capabilities of a pure video over IP device. Now, multiple cameras and encoders can share the storage on a local recording network, while the main LAN or WAN used for viewing and retrieval remains without any recording load. The video does not touch the main network in order to get recorded, which means it is immune from any main network failures.