Monitoring such systems — along
with video servers, transmitter remote controls and lots of other examples — can be done with video
industry packages that have SNMP
capability. But in a large installation,
there may well be more IT than video
in the future, so finding a happy medium is critical if we consider growth
of a system over the long term.
We should think about the topology of a monitoring system carefully.
If a monitoring system has to operate
over a WAN connection, one should
carefully consider what happens if
the interconnection goes down. If the
monitoring system is critical, as in
the case of a centralized master control facility remaining in contact with
the remote locations, then a backup
interconnection method needs to be
determined. Both MTBF and mean
time to repair (MTTR) will affect the
decisions about provisioning backup
interconnect bandwidth. It would not
suffice to leave the receiving end of a
central master control operating in
hysteresis for a long period of time. A
If a monitoring
system has to
operate over a WAN
connection, one
should carefully
consider what
happens if the
interconnection
goes down.
The other side
I always suggest to clients that the
remotely monitored facility have at
least some routing that can be controlled from the other end, at the
NOC. This allows remote operators
to switch a monitoring circuit between all potential points in the system over which they have monitoring
and control, which is lot more cost-effective than increasing the number of
“probes” and return video/audio circuits. We could learn a lot from NASA,
which has been remotely monitoring
and controlling rovers on Mars for
years with a system latency measured
in minutes, not milliseconds. BE
John Luff is a digital television consultant.
?
VPN over the Internet might allow at
least thumbnails and SNMP traffic to
continue even if higher quality video
would be impractical.
Send questions and comments to:
john.luff@penton.com
