Techniques for providing access to video data using a network attached storage device

#A general purpose computer typically allows for direct user interaction. For example, it is common for a general purpose computer to include a keyboard, a mouse and a user display, and to run a variety of user-level applications such as an e-mail application, a web browser, a word processor, and so on. For each user-level application, the heavily-provisioned operating system of the general purpose computer typically generously allocates and coordinates processor time, semiconductor memory, and access to peripheral devices, among other things.

#A network attached storage (NAS) unit typically has the sole purpose of providing file-based data storage services to other computerized devices through a network. Such data storage services include file sharing, as well as file backup and restoration. The operating system of the NAS unit is typically optimized so that the NAS unit provides these data storage services to the other computerized devices in a high availability/low-latency manner.

#In contrast to a general purpose computer, the NAS unit is not conveniently designed to carry out user-level general purpose computing tasks. Along these lines, the NAS unit typically runs a slimmed-down operating system and file system, and processes only I/O requests via a standard file sharing protocol (e.g., CIFS, NFS, etc.). User-level functionality such as user-level e-mail, web browsing and word processing as well as the associated drivers and support features are purposefully omitted for efficiency. As a result, user-level access to the NAS unit is exclusively through another computerized device such as a general purpose computer which connects to the NAS unit through a network.

#The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages will be apparent from the following description of particular embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which like reference characters refer to the same parts throughout the different views. The drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon illustrating the principles of various embodiments of the invention.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a system which utilizes an improved NAS device which is well-suited for providing access to video data.

#FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the NAS device of FIG. 1.

#An improved network attached storage (NAS) device is well-suited for providing access to video data. Such a NAS device is capable of detecting access to a video camera from the NAS device through a network, e.g., using Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) auto discovery. Such a NAS device is further capable of robustly and reliably receiving and storing video data directly from the video camera through the network. Since the NAS device obtains the video data directly from the video camera, external video processing equipment (e.g., a DVR or general purpose computer) does not need to process any video data from the video camera.

#FIG. 1 shows a system 20 which provides robust and reliable access to video data. The system 20 includes a NAS device 22, a set of user workstations 24(1), 24(2), . . . (collectively, user workstations 24), a set of video cameras 26(1), 26(2), . . . (collectively, video cameras 26), and communications media (or a network) 28. The communications media 28 is shown, by way of example only, as having a hub and spoke configuration (i.e., with each component connecting a network cloud). It should be understood that a variety of other network topologies are suitable for use by the system 20 such as wireless, backbone, ring, combinations thereof, etc.

#During operation, the NAS device 22 acts as a dedicated data storage server which carries out file sharing tasks using non-volatile storage 30 (e.g., a single disk drive, an array of disk drives arranged in a RAID group, etc.) on behalf of the user workstations 24. In particular, the NAS device 22 processes file-based data storage requests 32 from the user workstations 24 in accordance with a set of file sharing protocols (e.g., CIFS for Windows, NFS for Unix, etc.) while the user workstations 24 separately carryout general purpose computing tasks (e.g., user-level e-mail, web browsing and word processing).