camera bandwidth and home network

newtie

Hi all-

Does running my two surveillance cameras through my home network affect the available bandwidth of other devices on that network? My cameras are IP and wired.

Thanks,
Mark

Ben

Hi Mark,

Yes, all devices on the same network share the network bandwidth. However, the bandwidth generated by two IP cameras with normal settings should be functionally insignificant for a typical wired Ethernet network (especially a Gigabit one).

newtie

Thanks Ben.

wpns

I've got 6 LAN cameras, 2 cameras in the US, and 4 cameras in the Turks & Caicos feeding a server that's being watched by two client computers. My gigabit LAN bandwidth runs about 500Mb during the day, but most of that is the two clients. Cameras can run 2-10 Mb depending on settings.

You probably want a gigabit LAN nowadays anyway, switches are cheap...

newtie

Thanks!

billie

My advice would be to use smart non-blocking switches, and avoid using a possibly underpowered, and possibly dumb, bridge that may be built into a broadband modem. with smart non-blocking switches, only shared paths would share bandwidth. so for example, a television streaming from the internet via your broadband modem would not necessarily see any degradation due to camera traffic destined for a local computer via a different path (as long as you weren't using your broadband modem as your local bridge/switch).