Testing AvaLAN's Wireless Video Surveillance

Wireless IP video surveillance has plenty of hype (claims of 300 Mb/s city wide meshes) and also significant challenges (repeated deployment nightmares). Recently, we helped an integrator friend of ours who needed to deploy a wireless link. He has many years of experience deploying both analog and IP wireless. As such, he knows too well the risks and problems that wireless video surveillance brings.

This report shares test results from the AvaLAN AW5800HTP-PAIR. This is a kit with built in antennas that offers a tightly integrated solution though with modest bandwidth.

Our key findings include:

• Wireless connection was "plug n play" without any configuration, however some poorly documented steps should be taken for optimization
• The system offers limited advanced features 
• We achieved consistent 3.5 - 4 Mb/s IP video throughput
• In our setup, with HD/megapixel cameras, using MJPEG was more stable than H.264