CCTV + PoE switching + storage
the IP surveillance triad.

/ Engineering body

What this integration is and where it lives

Modern surveillance is three interlocked specifications, not one. Each IP camera draws PoE — anywhere from 7 W for a basic dome to 60 W for a heated PTZ. Each camera also pushes a bitrate that scales with resolution, frame rate and codec. And each retained day of footage consumes storage at that bitrate × 86,400 seconds. The interlock is what makes a CCTV BOQ a real engineering document: under-spec the PoE budget and cameras brown out at peak draw; under-spec the switch backplane and recording stutters; under-spec storage and the retention promise quietly degrades. The integration is a chain. PoE switches must support the cumulative camera draw — typically 90 W per port for PoE++ heated PTZ. The switch backplane must clear cumulative bitrate without packet loss. The storage system must hold retention days at the documented bitrate per camera. And the VMS layer must know how to fail over storage volumes without losing the recording window. Each layer has a sizing tool, and each tool depends on the previous. Sized correctly, the chain runs for years; sized wrong, the failure cascades from one layer to the next.