In recent years, network camera technology has caught up to the analog camera and now meets the same requirements and specifications. Network cameras even surpass the performance of analog cameras, by offering a number of advanced functions.

In short, an analog camera is a one-directional signal carrier which terminates at the DVR and operator level, whereas a network camera is fully bi-directional, and integrates with and drives the rest of the system to a high degree in a distributed and scalable environment. A network camera communicates with several applications in parallel, to perform various tasks, such as detecting motion or sending different streams of video.