Buyer guides, install notes, and field-tested deployment patterns from working Senior Specialists at IP Security Depot.
NETGEAR vs Ubiquiti vs TP-Link Surveillance Switches: A 2026 Buyer's Guide Every camera project has a switch decision buried in it, and in the sub-$1,000-per-switch tier the same three names come up on every bid I review: NETGEAR, Ubiquiti,
Read articleBuyer guides, install notes, and field-tested deployment patterns from working Senior Specialists.
Practical writeups for working integrators — no marketing, just field reality.
Cellular Sunsetting Update: What 3G/4G Decommissioning Means for Surveillance The 3G shutdowns of 2022 should have been the industry's wake-up call, and for a lot of surveillance and alarm operators they were a fire drill instead. I spent p
Why Network Monitoring on Surveillance Gear Generates False Alarms The fastest way to make a monitoring system useless is to make it noisy. I keep seeing the same arc: an integrator wires the camera network into the customer's NMS or a gene
Why Your Intrusion Panel Misses Alarms During Cellular Failover The line item on the proposal says "cellular backup communicator," and everyone in the room hears the same thing: if the internet goes down, the alarms still get through. That
Why Network Cabling Decisions From Year One Limit Year Five Nobody fights about cabling at the design review. The cameras get the attention, the VMS gets the demo, and the cable spec gets whatever line item the estimator pasted in from the
Why PoE Switch Sizing Goes Wrong at Three Watts The most common PoE sizing mistake is also the most invisible. An integrator reads the switch spec sheet, sees "720W total PoE budget", divides by camera count, and assumes the deployment is s
How to Design a Surveillance Network That Doesn't Compete With Production Traffic The wrong way to build a surveillance network is the way most are built: cameras sharing the same VLAN as the office printer fleet, recording NVRs talking to
Why Surveillance Network Switches Need Surge Protection You Aren't Buying Most surveillance proposals treat outdoor PoE as if the switch's built-in surge protection is the protection plan. Three lines about ESD protection in the data sheet,
Every article is written by a working engineer on our team. No outsourced content, no AI fluff.
Marty Allison
IP Cameras & VMS
Jerry Tildsen
Access Control & Intercoms
Eden Phillips
Networking & PoE
Karl Wilson
Warehouse Automation
Ted Perry
NVRs & Storage
James Everett
Outdoor & Industrial
Free pre-sales support from a Senior Specialist — product questions, BOM quotes, compatibility checks, price confirmation — within one business day. Selling since 2014.
