Port Esbjerg modernizes control room with NETGEAR AV switches
Written By:
NETGEAR Enterprise
Port Esbjerg, Denmark’s largest seaport, is a major hub for maritime cargo, offshore wind operations, and increasingly, drone-based surveillance
When the port embarked on a major control room overhaul as part of an EU-backed modernization program, the mandate was clear: replace a fragmented, hard-to-scale display environment with a unified platform designed to grow. At the heart of the resulting network infrastructure is the NETGEAR M4250-26G4XF-PoE+ AV switch, chosen by French systems integrator Motilde for its proven compatibility with the VuWall AV-over-IP ecosystem and its ease of configuration in a mission- critical environment.
From fragmented to unified
Before the upgrade, the control room relied on direct video outputs from physical servers running Milestone VMS, with HDMI distribution carrying camera feeds to the display wall and additional sources bolted on ad hoc. It worked, but only just. Changing the layout meant manual reconfiguration, adding a new source was a project in itself, and the room, designed for a single operator, was being asked to accommodate four.
Motilde, a specialist systems integrator with deep experience in control room and mission-critical visualization environments, was brought in to conduct a full ergonomic and technical study. The result was a deployment built on VuWall’s TRx centralized management platform, with NETGEAR providing the AV network backbone on which everything would run.
“NETGEAR is our proven provider in terms of AV switches for our installations. The compatibility with and certification for VuWall products made it the perfect choice for our AV network to support the whole installation.”
Eloïk EP, Control Engineer, Motilde
Built to scale
The new control room features 16 46-inch displays arranged in an 8×2 video wall spanning nearly seven meters. VuWall’s TRx platform manages the full range of sources: Milestone VMS camera feeds via a dedicated plugin, web-based sources through VuWall’s Application Server, and physical inputs via VuStream 350 IP KVM encoders and PAK video wall nodes. Operators control the entire wall from a ControlVu touch panel, switching layouts at a single press rather than reconfiguring hardware.
The NETGEAR M4250-26G4XF-PoE+ provides the AV-dedicated network layer that ties these components together, handling the multicast traffic demands of the VuWall ecosystem with the network segmentation and PoE+ capabilities that modern AV-over-IP deployments require. The switch’s AV OSTM with pre- configured AV profiles eliminated the complex manual configuration that a generic IT switch would have demanded.
“The user-friendly interface makes it a perfect solution for technical people who aren’t necessarily at ease with the complex network configuration of some IT products. The fact that it is a web-designed, easy-to-use interface makes it very practical.”
Eloïk Ep, Control Engineer, Motilde
Certified, supported, and ready
One factor that reinforced Motilde’s confidence in NETGEAR was the established technology partnership between NETGEAR and VuWall. Because VuWall’s teams work closely with NETGEAR’s AV switching platform across deployments, they can step in to validate switch configurations directly, an additional layer of assurance that Eloïk Ep found genuinely useful in practice.
The pre-sales support relationship also stood out. NETGEAR’s design team worked closely with Motilde through the specification phase, ensuring the right hardware was in place before installation began. And that paid off when it came time to commission the system.
Room to grow
Port Esbjerg’s control room is delivering the operational flexibility the port needed: operators can adapt the full video wall to changing maritime, weather, or traffic conditions in seconds. But the project’s real value is in what it enables next. Drone surveillance integration, additional camera feeds, and potential cross-agency collaboration are all on the roadmap. And the AV-over-IP architecture, built on a certified, scalable NETGEAR AV network, is designed to absorb those additions without replacing the core system.
For Motilde, the Port Esbjerg deployment reinforces a procurement principle the integrator applies consistently: when the network matters, NETGEAR is the default choice.