3 Things to Consider When Setting up Multicast Networking

Security integrators demand the best surveillance networking solutions. But, how can different integrators differentiate the good from the underperforming? Identifying these differences is especially critical when setting up a multicast network. Things can quickly become overcomplicated resulting in project delays and poor performance. Fortunately, there are three key factors integrators can look for when deploying a multicast network.

1. Simplicity

Multicast networking can quickly become too complex for security integrators to handle themselves. When this happens, time and money are spent hiring a specialized networking engineer to clean up an overly complicated installation. Identifying simple, quick solutions capable of supporting multicast networks will bring greater ROI to end-users and shorten onsite installation time to mere hours. Modern processes like Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) eliminate network engineers completely by allowing integrators to simply plug-and-play without needing to learn complicated code.

2. Support

Even the best networking switches can experience issues, however, not every switch comes with 24/7 support. Both end-users and integrators want to identify and solve problems as quickly as possible. Considering a multicast solution without next day onsite support can severely damage an integrator’s reputation with the end-user and lead to guesswork repairs. Opting to deploy a multicast-capable switch backed by award-winning support from the start of a project will eliminate any unnecessary costs.

3. Reliability

Along with the necessary support, selecting a multicast device with a long history of reliable performance optimized for video surveillance applications creates solutions built for the future. There are several key indicators of reliability including flash reconvergence upon network failure to eliminate outages, improved camera call-up, PTZ control, load balancing distribution, robust failover in software and hardware, single protocol usage, among others. When multicast networking has these features, a synergy is created between any VMS paired with an SPB multicast capable switch since the software only uses one protocol instead of multiple protocols like many traditional network platforms.