Smart Path intelligent media routing

Last modified: Monday July 25, 2022.

Alta Video uses the Avigilon Alta Smart Path technology to find and use the most efficient media routing paths between your cameras and your viewing stations and Alta Video mobile apps.

This is particularly important for cloud-based video surveillance systems, as the path chosen has an impact on the availability of the video streams, the bandwidth used, and the latency experienced.

Based on web real time communications (webRTC), Smart Path selects the most appropriate media path for any given situation; whether that be streaming video from your cameras across your local network to a viewing station located on the same network, streaming from your network via the Alta Cloud to a viewing station at a remote site, or streaming video from your cameras to your Alta Video mobile apps across a cellular network.

Smart Path works with your Avigilon Ava cloud-native cameras and with your cameras attached to your Alta Cloud Connectors, This provides you with the same experience regardless of whether you are using Avigilon Ava cameras or third-party devices connected to a Cloud Connector, or Avigilon Ava cloud-native cameras.

Bandwidth usage is kept to a minimum by ensuring that the media stream takes the most appropriate route. Streams are kept within the local network if possible, and only use the external networks if there are no other options available.

Whichever route Smart Path uses to stream the video media, the stream is always fully encrypted using transport layer security (TLS) between the camera and the viewing station.

Smart Path routing

To complete some of the routing options available to Smart Path, Alta Video uses Traversal Using Relay NAT (TURN) servers located around the globe. The TURN servers used by Ava are based either in the Google Cloud, or Digital Ocean.

If a user is attempting to view the video streams from a device on the same network as the Avigilon Ava cloud-native cameras or Alta Cloud Connectors, Smart Path routes the traffic across the local network.

Smart Path tries the following options to make the routing connection:

• Attempts to make a direct connection between the IP address of the client device and the IP address of the relevant camera or Cloud Connector. This is used when both the device and the User are on the same network.
• Uses the server reflexive IP address.
• Via the TURN server itself.