Once a camera is added to the Spot Appliance, the appliance will ingest a constant stream of data through RTSP. Cameras can be manually added if they are not in the same broadcast domain (over VPN, MPLS, and even over the internet). As long as the traffic is routable, a camera can be added to the Dashboard.
Direct Appliance-Camera Connection (Recommended)
If the camera and Spot Appliance are in the same broadcast domain, the stream will be direct from the camera to the Spot Appliance. This would typically go through a switch or hub. Typically, all cameras that are auto-discovered are direct connections.
As the camera and appliance are within the same broadcast domain, the appliance can see the camera's MAC address. This is used for checking what brand the camera is, which is used for default credentials and RTSP Path.
To help make direct connections easier to achieve, the Spot AI Business and Enterprise appliances come with two Ethernet ports. They also have the ability to have VLANs configured on them.
Routed Appliance-Camera Connection (Not recommended)
If the camera is manually added and is in a different broadcast domain (whether it be over VPN, MPLS, Internet, or just a different VLAN with VLANs unconfigured on the Spot Appliance), the traffic will be routed through the default gateway. It is possible that this can cause performance degradation on the default gateway depending on how much traffic is being streamed through it. It's always recommended to stream directly from the cameras to the Spot Appliance to avoid this possible performance degradation.
In the case of ingesting video from a camera through the internet, this will use a constant stream of data across the ISP internet connection. This will lower the total amount of available throughput you get through that ISP internet connection.
As the camera is not on the same broadcast domain as the Spot appliance, it is unable to see the camera's MAC address. This means Spot may not be able to automatically authenticate the camera or automatically apply the RTSP path for the camera.
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