Someone could access, manage, and view live and recorded video from anywhere around the world with an internet connection. Network security systems these days are also referred to as IP-based networks because the communicate over the network using the Internet Protocol, which is the same thing as your office network that you can connect to from virtually anywhere, anytime through the internet.

This makes it possible to outsource the monitoring of the surveillance to a third-party person or security firm. The third-party security firms usually are the people who will manage, install and fix the entire system if you bought it from them and can remotely diagnose problems as well.

Analog camera systems cannot be remotely accessed and require someone onsite to do the monitoring, viewing and managing of video unless additional equipment was installed which essentially would make it a hybrid analog/digital network system. The equipment required would be something like a video encoder.

Network security cameras offer progressive scan and megapixel technology that analog cameras cannot. With the digital technology, these cameras produce much clearer images and higher resolution. Also, digital images do not degrade like traditional analog video data would.

Speaking of degradation, transportation of the video over an IP-based network does not degrade digital video. But analog signals degrade over distance when transported across analog cables. In the case of analog systems with upgraded digital recorders, the image still needs to be recorded in analog format, converted to digital for the camera, transported in analog form, and then converted once more to be recorded digitally. All that converting degrades the video quality just a little bit. It’s best to minimize the degradation by using a full digital system.

Another benefit of a network security camera is that the cameras can be placed and networked from anywhere that has a wireless signal, or a nearby network port. It can also be removed much more cleanly than an analog camera which needs an individual cable directly from the camera to the source of recording.

As a video security system grows and cameras are added or removed, the internal infrastructure very flexible to accommodate the systems needs. It helps that all network security products are built to a standard so any of the products can easily be integrated into the system.

For these reasons, it’s just much more cost effective. Which in itself is another reason analog systems are losing favor to digital network security systems. Management of the hardware is a breeze compared to the cumbersome analog system. And as wireless technology advances and becomes cheaper, analog equipment are slowly beginning to fade into obsolesce.