ASK THE EXPERTS - Physical Security

[ciscomoderator]

Welcome to the Cisco Networking Professionals Ask the Expert conversation.

This is an opportunity to get an update on the Physical Security with Cisco expert Gerry Burgess.

Remember to use the rating system to let Gerry know if you have received an adequate response.

Gerry might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Security sub-community, shortly after the event. This event lasts through May 6, 2011. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

[wu.kristi]

Hi Gerry,

My VSOM client stops showing video after 150 hours or so. Maybe it's user inactivity, but the session timeout is set to a week. Is there a way to remove the timeout?

Thanks Kristi.

[Gerald Burgess]

There is no way to get rid of the VSOM timeout right now, but an enhancement request to remove the VSOM timeout, CSCsz68720, has been been entered.

The way to get around it right now is to use Virtual Matrix (VSVM).  Just create a view and use the VM client.  There is no timeout on that.

[thorton.stevet]

Gerry, the time I see in my video makes no sense.  When I look at my archive and scroll to the right end of the slider bar it reports a time of 1969.

thanks Steve

[Gerald Burgess]

Seeing dates like 1970 and 1969 in the vsom slider bars just means the pc's time functions are returning error values rather than the correct times.

The best approach to this would be to resynchronize NTP on the VSM servers you are using and then restart the PCs to make sure they are picking up the current time as well.

Resynchronizing can be done with some NTP test tools available on the server's desktop.  NTP can also be synchronized by restarting the NTP daemon on the server.  To restart the ntp daemon

# /etc/init.d/ntpd restart

to query the local ntp info 

# ntpq -p

[carowe0323]

Gary,

There's been a lot of talk lately about Cisco getting back to its core technologies. How does physical security fit into that model? video surveillance, door access, etc.

./cr

[Gerald Burgess]

Physical security fits into Cisco's core technologies model is an emerging technology that would be part of Cisco's Smart Connected Community solution.

Here's a page that talks about the overall solution:

http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/smart_connected_communities.html

Is that what you were loooking for?

[peggyjackson]

After configuring my IP cameras, I check back later and find their configurations have reverted to the earlier settings.  Why?

[Gerald Burgess]

It sounds like you went to the cameras directly to configure them.

Whenever you configure the IP cameras you need to use the VSOM interface.

The reason for this is that once the media server has a configuration for the camera, every time it reconnects to the camera it will automatically issue the commands to make sure the configuration it expects is present.