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GPON For 300+ Surveillance Cameras - Any Experiences?

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Tommy Sutherland
Feb 13, 2018
IPVMU Certified

Full disclosure I have very little knowledge of GPON other than what I have read online.  We are deploying GPON at a facility and our IT folks are pushing to deploy it at all new projects for both video and data networks.  Up to this point we have generally separated the two networks. I was just wondering if anyone has any real world experience using GPON with 300+ 4-9MP cameras, 50-100 doors and if you have identified any challenges vs traditional copper system?

JH
John Honovich
Feb 13, 2018
IPVM

Tommy, thanks for asking!

For others, a PON is a passive optical network, the G here refers to gigabit.

I have not heard of PONs being used in video surveillance but that may be more of a product of PONs being historically niche and more residential / ISP focused (before I came into this industry, I worked briefly for a startup PON developer).

My main question / concern is, by designs, PONs multiplex upstream connections which limit relative upstream bandwidth, which be a concern if you have cameras at each node.

Tommy, is the headend /recorder going to be at the 'main' side of the PON?

(1)
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Tommy Sutherland
Feb 13, 2018
IPVMU Certified

Thank you for your reply, John.  I would assume the answer would be yes but I am really unsure. I attempted to reach out to the IT engineer but have yet to receive a response.  I will update once I get confirmation.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Feb 13, 2018

Are you PON certified?

KE
Kahn Ely
Feb 13, 2018

I have done some testing of CCTV cameras over a PON, with the cameras located at the ONT and the NVR/Server located at the OLT side.

As John mentions the upstream bandwidth can be limited due to the TDM nature of PON's. We found good results limiting bandwidth upstream to about 4Mbps from each ONT (in our test this was 2 cameras per ONT).

We have also installed a GPON system in a few hotels around Brisbane to service the hotel's IPTV system. Contractors have then placed a single camera on each ONT to send data back to their NVR at the headend. This caused no issues with our systems and they have been perfectly happy with their results. I can't comment what stream rate they were using for their cameras though.

This is only about 30-40 cameras so much smaller than your question. From what I have seen of our PON systems though you should be able to expand them very easily just by running more PON's. In my testing it was perfectly fine to run a 32 way split from a single PON to service 32 ONT's and hence 64 cameras.

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Tommy Sutherland
Feb 14, 2018
IPVMU Certified

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your experiences.  I have another meeting tomorrow to discuss this further.

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