Abstract:
A system and method for storing image information, such as video clips, across multiple storage devices of different business entities provides redundancy and off-site storage, but possibly without the costs associated with a traditional cloud storage system. In examples, a peer-to-peer arrangement is used. A user/customer accesses the image information via a web portal hosted by their business entity or the operator of the system or accesses the image information from a mobile device.

Description:
RELATED APPLICATIONS 
       [0001]    This application claims the benefit under 35 USC  119 (e) of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/186,938, filed on Jun. 30, 2015, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. 
     
    
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0002]    Data storage is commonly offered as a cloud service. Business entities utilize cloud storage as a way of remotely storing data and as a tool for providing remote access to their data. 
         [0003]    At the same time, surveillance camera systems are becoming increasingly common, These camera systems will usually include various types of cameras such as fixed cameras, e.g., wide field or fisheye lens cameras, and adjustable cameras, e.g., dome cameras and pan, tilt, zoom (PTZ) cameras. The image information (such as video clips or still images for series of still images) generated by the cameras can be stored locally on the cameras and/or stored in a common, typically local, repository such as a network video recorder (NVR). 
         [0004]    In order to prevent data loss, business entities will sometimes store the image information generated by their surveillance camera systems in cloud storage systems. The same advantages of remote access and storage apply. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0005]    One problem with cloud storage of surveillance camera image information is cost. The amount of storage consumed by even a single camera can be costly on a monthly basis, or however periodically billed. These cloud storage systems are typically operated by third parties/separate business entities that charge for the storage on a subscription basis, with the periodic charges increasing with increased storage demands. 
         [0006]    The present invention concerns a scheme to store image information, such as video clips or still images or series of still images, across multiple storage devices of different business entities. The advantages of redundancy and off-site storage are thus obtained, but possibly with lowered costs than those associated with traditional cloud storage systems. Instead, in examples, a peer-to-peer arrangement is used. Nevertheless, it is still possible for a user/customer to access the image information via a web portal hosted by their business entity or the operator of the system or access the image information from a mobile device. 
         [0007]    In general, according to one aspect, the invention features a system for image information storage. The system comprises image information storage devices that are located in respective, different business entities. The devices store image information from one or more other business entities, i.e., business entities that are different from the business entity owner of the devices. One or more storage indexes indicate where image information is stored between the business entities and between the devices. 
         [0008]    In embodiments, the image information storage devices include network video recorders and network cameras. Also, each of the image storage devices can include local storage in which image information is stored for the respective business entity and peer storage in which image information is stored from at least one other business entity. Typically, at least this peer storage is encrypted. 
         [0009]    The image information can be transmitted between image information storage devices of different business entities using peer-to-peer connections. Also, the system can provide selectable levels of redundancy that are associated with and/or dictated by each of the business entities. The image information is then stored over higher numbers of other business entities/devices for higher levels of redundancy. 
         [0010]    In general, according to another aspect, the invention features a method for image information storage. The method comprises storing image information storage generated at respective business entities to storage devices of other business entities and maintaining one or more indexes that indicate where image information is stored between the business entities. 
         [0011]    In general, according to another aspect, the invention features an image information storage device. This device comprises image information storage, including local storage, in which locally-generated image information is stored, and peer storage, in which remotely-generated image information is stored. The device also has a peer-to-peer client for sending locally-generated image information to and receiving remotely-generated image information from other image information storage devices. 
         [0012]    The above and other features of the invention including various novel details of construction and combinations of parts, and other advantages, will now be more particularly described with reference to the accompanying drawings and pointed out in the claims. It will be understood that the particular method and device embodying the invention are shown by way of illustration and not as a limitation of the invention. The principles and features of this invention may be employed in various and numerous embodiments without departing from the scope of the invention. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0013]    In the accompanying drawings, reference characters refer to the same parts throughout the different views. The drawings are not necessarily to scale; emphasis has instead been placed upon illustrating the principles of the invention. Of the drawings: 
           [0014]      FIG. 1  is a schematic diagram of a distributed video storage system according to the present invention; 
           [0015]      FIG. 2A  is a block diagram of a camera network storage device according to the present invention; 
           [0016]      FIG. 2B  is a block diagram of a network video recorder storage device according to the present invention; 
           [0017]      FIG. 3  is a schematic diagram showing aspects of the storage index; 
           [0018]      FIG. 4  is a schematic diagram showing aspects of the account database; 
           [0019]      FIG. 5  is a schematic diagram showing the redundancy manager; and 
           [0020]      FIG. 6  is a schematic diagram of a distributed video storage system according to another embodiment. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
       [0021]    The invention now will be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which illustrative embodiments of the invention are shown. This invention may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the scope of the invention to those skilled in the art. Like numbers refer to like elements throughout. As used herein, the term “and/or” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items. 
         [0022]    It will be understood that although the terms “first” and “second” are used herein to describe various elements, these elements should not be limited by these terms. These terms are used only to distinguish one element from another element. Thus, an element discussed below could be termed a second element, and similarly, a second element may be termed a first element without departing from the teachings of the present invention. 
         [0023]    As used herein, the singular forms and the articles “a”, “an,” and “the” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless expressly stated otherwise. It will he further understood that the terms “includes,” “comprises,” “including,” and/or “comprising,” when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being “connected” or “coupled” to another element, it can be directly connected or coupled to the other element or intervening elements may be present. Furthermore, “connected” or “coupled” as used herein may include wirelessly connected or coupled. As used herein, the term “and/or” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items. 
         [0024]      FIG. 1  shows a first embodiment of a distributed video storage system which has been constructed according to the principles of the present invention. 
         [0025]    In general, the system enables storage to be shared across a number of different customers or business entities or across a number of different sites or building of the same business entity. In effect, the customers may store some of their image information generated by surveillance cameras locally on their network, and they may also store that image information on storage devices of other customers or business entities. This provides the benefit of allowing these customers or business entities to have the advantages associated with redundancy and off-site storage, on one hand, e avoiding the costs of transitional cloud storage systems, on the other. 
         [0026]    In the illustrated example, several business entities, Customer 1, Customer 2, and Customer 3 and/or several different sites or building of the same customer, operate or have their own local area or enterprise networks  70 - 1 ,  70 - 2 , and  70 - 3 . On the other hand, Customer 4, which might be a small business, does not operate its own local area or enterprise network. These local area enterprise networks are usually characterized by their own private internet protocol (IP) address space using non-publically-routable IP addresses, following the standards set by RFC 1918 for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), and RFC 4193 for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). 
         [0027]    Image information, such as video clips or still images, e.g., MPEG, JPEG or streaming PEG files, are stored locally on each customer&#39;s network (or on a single device, in the case of Customer 4). The image information is also stored in a redundant fashion on storage of other customers via the connectivity provided by the intra-enterprise network  50 , such as the Internet and/or one or more network service provider networks. 
         [0028]    In the specific example of Customer 1, the associated local area enterprise network  70 - 1  includes a number of different image information storage devices. For example, a network video recorder (NVR)  1 A receives image information such as video clips from two connected, dedicated, surveillance cameras  150 - 1 ,  150 - 2 . In one implementation, image information from these cameras is stored to the NVR&#39;s internal storage  1 A- 208 . Also in the example, another surveillance camera  1 B also contains its own onboard storage  1 B- 208 . This allows the surveillance camera  1 B to store at least some of the image information, such as video clips, that it generates. Also, on the network of Customer 1  70 - 1  is a storage appliance IC that provides bulk data storage  1 C- 208 . 
         [0029]    In order to promote redundancy, in one example, the age information generated by surveillance cameras  150 - 1 ,  150 - 2  and surveillance camera  1 B, which contains its own onboard storage, is distributed among the various storage assets on Customer I&#39;s network  70 - 1 , including storage  1 A- 208 ,  1 B- 208 , and  1 C- 208 . 
         [0030]    In a similar vein, Customer 2 also has its own enterprise network  70 - 2 . This includes a network surveillance camera  150 - 3 , such as an internet protocol (FP) camera. Also on the network is an NVR  2 A that has s own image information storage A- 208 . 
         [0031]    Customer 3 has its associated network  70 - 3 , which includes three surveillance cameras  3 A,  3 B,  3 C. Each of these surveillance cameras in the illustrated example has its own onboard image information storage resource  3 A- 208 ,  3 B- 208 ,  3 C- 208 , respectively. 
         [0032]    Finally, Customer 4, possibly a small business with only a few employees, has a single surveillance camera  4 A. This surveillance camera has its own image information storage  4 A- 208  and might be directly connected to the network  50 , as shown. 
         [0033]    In the illustrated example, in order to enable the different customers to share and distribute their image information for off-site and redundant storage, an application server  110  maintains a number of different databases or data stores that allow the image information from the different customers to be stored in a shared, communal fashion. Specifically, the application server  110  maintains an account database  114 , a storage index  112 , and a redundancy manager  115 . 
         [0034]      FIGS. 2A and 2B  illustrate the components of various image information storage assets.  FIG. 2A  shows an example of a surveillance camera that has onboard storage, such as surveillance cameras  1 B,  3 A,  3 B,  3 C, and  4 A.  FIG. 2B  shows an example of a storage asset such as an NVR that provides dedicated storage and controls a number of surveillance cameras on the local enterprise network, such as NVR&#39;s  1 A and  2 A. 
         [0035]    In either case, the local storage  208  is divided into local storage  210  and peer storage  212 . The local storage  210  stores image information such as video clips that were generated by either the device itself, such as in the example of a surveillance camera with integrated storage, or image information that was typically generated on the local network of the business entity that owns the device. 
         [0036]    So, in the example of Customer 1, the local storage  210  associated with surveillance camera  1 B stores image information generated by itself (camera  1 B) and possibly also stores image information generated by other cameras on network  70 - 1  of Customer 1, such as surveillance cameras  150 - 1 ,  150 - 2 . 
         [0037]    On the other hand, peer storage  212  contains image information, such as video clips, that were generated by other customers or business entities or by the same customer&#39;s devices but at a different building. For example, the peer storage  212  on Customer 1&#39;s storage assets, such as NVR  1 A and/or surveillance camera  113 , stores image information from one or more of the other customers such as Customer 2, Customer 3, and/or Customer 4. In this way, each customer makes available some of its local storage for other business entities, in return for those other business entities&#39; storing some of that customer&#39;s image information, thereby providing off-site storage and redundancy. 
         [0038]    The image information storage assets also contain a network interface  216  for connecting to the local network  70  or directly to the inter-enterprise network  50 . This interface can be wired or wireless. 
         [0039]    The storage assets  1 B,  3 A,  3 C,  4 A,  1 A,  2 A also preferably each contain or have access to an encrypt/decrypt module  222 , which can be a separate hardware compute resource or simply a process that executes on the device&#39;s processor. The encrypt/decrypt module  222  allows for the encryption of image information that is sent for storage to peer storage of another business entity and for decryption of any image information retrieved from peer storage of another business entity. 
         [0040]    The image information storage assets  1 B,  3 A,  3 B,  3 C,  4 A,  1 A,  2 A further have respective peer-to-peer clients  214  that enables the transfer of the image information through the network  50  to the storage assets of another business entity. This client will typically include a firewall punch-through capability to bypass any intervening firewalls or other security appliances. Finally, in some examples, each of the storage assets further include a user interface  218 , such as an embedded HTML server that allows for the user access of the image information and a management interface  220  that allows for the user management of how the image information is stored. 
         [0041]      FIG. 3  illustrates one embodiment of the storage index  112 , which tracks the various locations in which image information, such as video clips, is stored. 
         [0042]    As shown in  FIG. 1 , in one embodiment, the storage index  112  is maintained by a third party application server that is controlled by a service provider business entity other than Customers 1-4. However, in another example, the storage index  112  is maintained on a storage asset of each of Customers 1-4 for the image information of each of the respective customers. 
         [0043]    Specifically, each of the customers Customer 1, Customer 2, Customer 3, and Customer 4, typically stores their respective image information, such as their own video clips 1-4 that were generated by the surveillance cameras installed at their respective premises or buildings, for example. In one example, one copy of these video clips is often stored locally. For example, video clip 1 and video clip 2 of Customer 1 are stored locally on storage device  1 A. 
         [0044]    In order to provide redundancy and off-site storage, however, these video clips 1-4 for Customer 1 are also stored into redundant locations. For example, video clip 1 is also stored in the peer storage of device  2 A of Customer 2, and video clip 4 of Customer 1 is stored on surveillance camera  3 A of Customer 3. In a similar vein, the video clips 1-4 of Customer 2 are all stored locally on storage assets of that customer, devices  2 A,  2 A,  2 B, and  2 A, respectively. Nevertheless, redundant storage is provided for those same video clips on device  1 A of Customer 1. 
         [0045]    Also illustrated is how different customers can subscribe or have the ability to have different levels of image information storage redundancy. For example, Customer 1 stores its image information locally and into two other redundant storage locations for each of the video clips 1-4. In contrast, Customer 2 has subscribed to a lower level of redundancy. Specifically, Customer 2 has its video clips stored locally and in only one other redundant location. In this example, they are stored mainly to the NVR of Customer 1. In the further example of Customer 3, its video clips are stored locally but also in three separate redundant storage locations: two of the locations are local (surveillance cameras  3 A and  3 C) and two are remote (NVR  2 A and device  1 C). Finally, Customer 4 stores some of its video clips locally on its sole surveillance camera  4 A; however, each of the video clips 1-3 of Customer 4 are also stored on one redundant location, specifically devices  2 A and  1 C of Customers 2 and 1, respectively. 
         [0046]    In this way, the image information is stored in multiple locations for each of these customers, across business entities. As a result, each customer merely incurs the added cost of having to support an incremental amount of peer storage on their local storage assets. 
         [0047]      FIG. 4  illustrates some of the information maintained in the account database  114  for the application server  110 . Specifically, for each customer there is a redundancy level that is associated with the amount of redundancy that each customer has elected. For example, Customer 1 has a redundancy level of 2, which corresponds to their image information being stored in two off-site storage locations, whereas Customer 3 has elected to have a higher level of redundancy: 3. In this case, the image information for Customer 3 is stored in three redundant storage locations. 
         [0048]    The account database  114  also stores the encryption key utilized by each of the customers 1-4, In the preferred embodiment, the image information that is stored in the peer storage of another customer is encrypted. In the illustrated example, the corresponding encryption keys are stored by the application server  110 . Although in other embodiments, the encryption key is only held by the customer for that customer&#39;s image information. 
         [0049]      FIG. 5  illustrates some of the information maintained in the redundancy manager  115 . In the illustrated embodiment, the redundancy manager  115  maintains information concerning the storage assets of each of the customers 1-4. For example, in the illustrated example, it maintains the device type for each of the storage assets  1 A,  113 ,  1 C for Customer 1. The storage manager  115  further maintains the storage capacity for each of these devices along with the amount of free storage for each of the storage assets. In this way, the application server  110  can distribute the redundant storage required by each of the customers to the peer storage of other customers. 
         [0050]      FIG. 6  illustrates still another embodiment. In this example, the storage index is either alternatively maintained or additionally maintained locally by the customers. Specifically, the NVR  1 A further maintains its own storage index  112 - 1 . This storage index is similar to that maintained by the application server  110 . Specifically, the storage index indicates the redundant storage locations for each of the video clips of Customer 1 and where those video clips are stored in peer storage of the other customers. The advantage of this system is that if the application server  110  is unavailable or if the customers wish to directly negotiate between each other as to how the video image information is stored redundantly, the index information can be stored locally for each of the customers on their respective local networks  70 . 
         [0051]    While this invention has been particularly shown and described with references to preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the scope of the invention encompassed by the appended claims.