WestPoint · Networks · Extreme Networks
Adding a building without touching the rest of the network.
Switching and Wi-Fi for large venues, with a way of building the network of its own that changes two things that matter in video: how long it takes to extend and how long it takes to recover from a cut.
What kind of manufacturer it is, and how you recognise it.
Extreme Networks — Switching and Wi-Fi for campuses and large venues. Its ground is the large venue and it shows in everything it does.
Extreme puts the campus and the venue with a lot of people first: stadiums, hospitals, airports, universities, convention centres, ports. High-end equipment, plenty of dense Wi-Fi, and centralised management that can be held in the cloud or in the house — both, which is a flexibility not everyone offers.
What it gives up is market share, and that has a practical consequence that has to be said: there are fewer people available who know how to configure it. In a large installation where the client depends on finding a technician, that is a real factor, and it is not fixed by saying the product is good.
You recognise it by a way of building the network of its own, inherited from a technology that comes from the carrier world: instead of configuring every switch along the path so that a service crosses the network, you configure only the two ends and the middle works it out for itself. It is the difference between touching eight cabinets to add a camera network to a new building and touching two.
How it is administered.
There is a command line, a web interface and a centralised management platform that administers switches and Wi-Fi together, with templates by type of site and with visibility of what happens on each port. What sets it apart from the pure-cloud brands is that this platform can be installed inside the client's own installation, which resolves at a stroke the specifications that forbid management living outside.
And there is one thing worth knowing before deciding: its way of building the network of its own is powerful and it is NOT the standard way everybody knows. Whoever administers it has to learn it. That is a project decision, not a detail, and it is discussed beforehand with the client's IT team — because if in the end nobody in that house understands it, you will have built a network only the people who installed it can touch.
Where it fits well in a security installation.
In large venues that grow in pieces. A hospital opening a wing, a port extending a terminal, a campus adding a building: there the advantage of configuring only the ends shows up at every extension, and extensions at these places are continuous. Each one that does not force you to touch the middle of the network is a weekend of work that does not get done.
In installations with many separate networks that have to reach many places: cameras, access control, public address, fire, public Wi-Fi, staff Wi-Fi, building management equipment. All over the same physical cable and rigorously separated from one another. That is exactly what this house does comfortably.
Where we would not put it.
In small and medium installations. All its value is in the scale and in how often things change; in an industrial unit with forty cameras there are no continuous extensions and no dozens of cabinets, and you pay for a way of building the network nobody is going to make use of.
Where the client is not going to have anybody able to learn its own way of working, and does not want to depend on the integrator. Here is the honesty of this page: the technology that makes it good is also what makes it something not just anybody can carry on. If the IT team does not want to get into that, the right thing is to build it the standard way even if part of the advantage is lost, or to fit another brand.
And in harsh outdoor conditions or on a plant floor, like every campus house: there it takes industrial equipment with a temperature range, with no fan and with dual power. Mixing brands by environment is normal and is not a problem if the boundary is written down.
What really decides things in a video project.
Four, and the first is its best argument measured with a stopwatch.
- How long a cut takes to recover. Its way of building the network of its own rebuilds paths very quickly — of the order of milliseconds, not seconds — and in video that translates directly: if the network comes back before the conversations between the cameras and the recorder break, no recording is lost. With a standard network tree badly closed, a five-second cut can be a minute of lost recording across hundreds of cameras, because the recorder has to reconnect them all. It is measured by cutting a cable with the stopwatch in your hand and then counting the gaps in the recording.
- The power, with the usual sums and a large-venue nuance: at these places there are outdoor cameras with heaters, motorised domes and infrared illuminators, which are the ones that ask for most. The consumption of the coldest night is added up, it is calculated with a single power supply alive and margin is left for the cameras that will be added when the venue is extended, because it will be extended.
- Real separation between the building's systems. Cameras, access control, fire and building management share cable and should not share network. It is what this house does best and it is also where we have seen most inherited installations with everything together, because on commissioning day everything together works.
- Multicast in venues where many screens watch the same thing. If the video system sends a single copy that the network shares out, you have to decide who shares it out and who asks who wants it. Without that, one camera on multicast reaches every port on its network and saturates things that should not even know about it.
Licences and subscriptions, and what happens when they expire.
The equipment is bought. What goes by subscription is the centralised management platform and the support, with tiers according to how much visibility and how much history you want, and there is an option to have it in the house instead of in the manufacturer's cloud, with its own licence model.
When the subscription expires, the switches carry on switching and carry on powering cameras. What you lose is the central screen, the history and the right to new firmware and to support. The network stays administrable locally, which is an important difference from the brands where the licence keeps the equipment switched on.
What is worth being clear about from the start is the life cycle of the particular model you buy, and that holds for any brand that is not the dominant one: in an installation that is going to grow over eight years, being able to buy the same switch four years from now is part of what you are buying. You ask beforehand and put it in the minutes, you do not assume it.
Who administers it when we leave.
Here the question has an honest answer that conditions the choice of brand.
At venues this size there is always an IT team, and the network has to carry on being theirs. The day to day — see which port is down, which camera is not answering, move a network point, look at the consumption — is handled from the central platform without knowing anything about the underlying technology, and the client does that without trouble.
The structural side is another matter, and it is the conversation that has to be had BEFORE choosing a brand: if the network is built with its own technology, somebody in that house has to learn it or accept that they depend on whoever installed it. We put it that plainly, with both options on the table, and the client makes the decision. A network only the integrator can touch is not an advantage for the integrator: it is a problem for the client and it ends up being a problem for both.
And the usual tone: if the IT team already has its brand and its procedures, we are not here to change them. We adapt to the network that is there, we ask in writing for what the video needs — power, throughput, separation, maximum recovery time — and when what is there does not stretch, we explain it with numbers and before signing.
Where to go next.
What does not change with the brand — traffic, power, separation and what happens if a cable is cut — is covered in the area.
Get started
A large venue that grows in pieces?
Tell us how many buildings there are, how many cameras per building, how often it gets extended and how long an area can be blind. With that we will tell you what shape of network suits you and, above all, who is going to be able to maintain it five years from now.