Netsurv: An IP-based surveillance system with robust network fault tolerance and link load balance capabilities

Current video surveillance systems are becoming digitalized and IP-based. With the development of the Internet, wireless and broadband networks, it is possible for a surveillance system client to ubiquitously access the surveillance system, i.e., to view the surveillance video and control the system remotely. One critical disadvantage of IP-based surveillance is the network reliability problem. That is, since the IP-based surveillance system is IP-based, all of the services provided by the IP-based surveillance system will not be accessible at all if network failure occurs. However, currently no related works address the network fault tolerance issue for IP-based surveillance systems. In this paper, possible network failure scenarios are investigated and determined. A network-fault-tolerant IP-based surveillance (NeTSurv) system is designed and implemented in the IPv6 network. In addition to the existing features of current video surveillance systems, a multihome-based approach is adopted to improve the network fault tolerance capability of the NeTSurv system. Two-level fault tolerance mechanisms are developed to solve the connectivity issue and the continuity issue of video playout for different link failure scenarios. With the devised mechanism, lost surveillance video data resulting from abrupt link failure can be recovered. Furthermore, a load balance mechanism is also devised for the NeTSurv system to distribute the load across multiple links. Using the load balance mechanism, congestion of a single link can be prevented when multiple clients request surveillance video through the Internet at the same time.