Subscriber Discussion

Cisco Vs Ubiquiti In Municipal Surveillance?

RM
Robert Meiring
May 29, 2014

Whilst probable best practice is to use Ebiquiti in small to medium wireless CCTV environments and Cisco in enterprise CCTV wireless solutions, budget consideration no doubt, becomes a contender.

Muncipalities (Shires in Oz) are nearly always are budget conscious. These are 'enterprise' network environments.

For the integrator......it's decision time...

Any ideas in this regard?

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RJ Spurr
May 29, 2014
IPVMU Certified

Yes, first the spelling is Ubiquti. Second, I lived in Sydney for 10 years :). Third, we put loads of cameras on poles and now use Ubiquiti exclusively. Formerly Engenius radios, however had problems with multiple cameras supported by a single radio. We pulled a lot of Engenius radios down and replaced them with Ubiquti NanoBeam M's and RocketM5's with an omni directional antennas. I find that the IT departments view radios for cameras in a different light than enterprise wireless. We are a Xirrus wifi partner, so we lead with Xirrus as an enterprise wifi solution.

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Richard Brady
May 29, 2014

Actually the spelling is UBIQUITI...

AS
Andrew Somerville
May 29, 2014

Cisco may have its strengths but wireless for enterprise CCTV is not one of them, certainly if you are considering the outdoor space - which is where wireless has greatest benefits and where Ubiquiti fits.

Here in the UK I can't remember seeing any muni CCTV deployment made in the last 5 years that used Cisco. The choice at 5GHz is generally between 'budget' vendors such as Ubiquiti and Ligowave and 'professional' vendors such as Cambium, Infinet and Radwin.

JH
John Honovich
May 29, 2014
IPVM

If your municipality standardizes or requires using Cisco, use Cisco. Otherwise...

In all seriousness, that is the most common use case we see of Cisco in wireless video surveillance - that it is required by the end user or the line of the VAR / integrator.

AS
Andrew Somerville
May 29, 2014

In UK, it doesn't appear that muni CCTV departments are necessarily beholden to standardisation on Cisco that originates from the IT department. Maybe yes for switches, routers and firewalls but not for outdoor wireless.

Also what Cisco products are available that fit the usual CCTV requirements?

* The only wireless bridge they offer is 802.11bg based, meaning 2.4GHz only and practical throughput limit of 20Mbit/s or so.

* They have no outdoor base stations and no outdoor CPEs.

All they can offer is expensive mesh APs requriing external antennas.

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