How Much Bandwidth Will An IP Camera Use?

 

Quick research about IP camera’s will tell you that the bandwidth used depends entirely on the camera type, codec used and frame rate for live video streaming. A quick search about codecs and camera differences revealed that IP cameras using a a codec with high compression and low frame rates will result in live streaming data rates of between 100 kBit/s and 350 kBit/s.

This means that is we take an average bandwidth of 200 kBit/s then the calculation for 1 hour of live video streaming / viewing will be:-

1 hour = 60 minutes = 3600s

3600s x 200 kBit/s = 720,000 kBits

720,000 kilobits = 703Mb (1 kilobit = 1024 Mb – Megabit)

So this is roughly 3/4 of 1GB.

These are only estimates and you should contact your own camera or DVR manufacturer to determine how much bandwidth you will use for live streaming and for downloading images and videos. The 4G or 5G router does not determine how much data you would use – it is only providing the internet connection and does not determine how that connection is used.

You can also alter the amount of data used by your CCTV camera or DVR/NVR by changing which stream is being sent, main-stream or sub-stream.

 

Notes

Megabits, Megabytes, kilobits and kilobytes are often confused but as a simple rule of thumb we use the following:-

Normally bandwidth speeds are measured in Mbs or Kbs (Megabits per second and Kilobits per second) – so in a speed test you might get a download speed of 20Mbps and an upload speed of 0.7Mbps (or 700 Kbps)
HDD Space is measured in KBs , MBs or GBs (Kilobytes, megabytes or Gigabytes)

 

See 4G and 5G Proroute router options for your CCTV installation here.

 

How Much data will a CCTV NVR use when using a 4G or 5G SIM Card?