How To calculate bandwidth consumed by cameras

Can somebody please tell me how much bandwidth the Wyze Cam v3 consumes on 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz? Even better, how do I calculate this? I’m about to do a new installation with 12-15 Wyza Cam v3’s and since it’s all Wi-Fi bandwidth this sort of calculation is going to be critical for my design, router choice(s), etc.

Thanks,
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TLDR: See last two paragraphs. :slight_smile:

Many of today’s IoT devices only use the 2.4 GHz band of 802.11n, so a single-band single-stream N router is all you need for those. Wyze is no different. So Wyze cameras probably won’t drive router capabilities much.

The exception to that is the number of devices allowed on the subnet. Many old routers falsely limited the number of devices, bringing a 256-address TCP/IP subnet down to 32 or fewer allowed devices. Today’s routers allow many more slots to be active, and you will need them if you get serious about home automation.

I have 43 devices active on my network ATM, and that’s not counting intermittently-active devices like bathroom scales and the like (I have a Fitbit scale that uses WiFi, but only when you are standing on it). I also have a lot of devices that I only plug in when I travel (extra plugs & cameras mostly).

To get back to your original question:

A V3 doesn’t use the 5 GHz band. The Doorbell Pro can, but most everything else Wyze sells ATM are limited to the 2.4 GHz band of 802.11n discussed above. A V2 or V3 camera might generate 150KB/s in live view on that network. That’s 1.2Mb/sec, if the uppercase ‘B’ is Bytes (8 x 150KB). So, it would take a little over 40 cameras live steaming at once to get to 50% of the 100Mbit/s ‘real-world’ throughput of a single-stream 150Mbps 802.11n network.

And it is nearly impossible to have 40 cameras live-streaming at the same time. You would need 40 devices to receive them, because they only do full bandwidth when you are in HD mode, and group mode is 360p.

I have 17 cams online in one capacity or another ATM (I own many more), and although they all send out the occasional event recording and do a little handshaking with the servers, about the most I ever ask the network to do is live stream 4 in 360p group mode on 2 devices at once. So probably not all that challenging to a modern router.

What consumes far more of your bandwidth (and your router’s processor) are things like live streaming Netflix on several devices, or downloading large files (some people download their Netflix videos as a file, and then view that). Your digital TV from your cable company also consumes bandwidth. Backups consume bandwidth big time. All these can clog up a network far more than Wyze devices, although you may see the issues created displayed on Wyze devices.

In summary, whereas the bandwidth of IoT devices like Wyze cameras consume very little of a modern router’s resources, you definitely need to make sure there are no limitations on the number of devices you can add to a subnet, and you definitely need to take into account the speeds you will need for far bigger resource hogs like streaming services, downloads, and backups.

There are some modern router systems that work great with Wyze devices; maybe someone will make recommendations of things they’ve recently purchased here. My AC router is perfect and powerful, but it is also 7 years old, so I shouldn’t recommend it. @Mavens (and others) - recommend a good modern system if you have one. :slight_smile:

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That is a “dropped the mic” response if I ever saw one. Nice.

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256-address TCP/IP subnet
Save one address for route and one for broadcast, usable 254. If you can change the network to class ‘A’ 10.0.0.0 mask 255.0.0.0 yields 16,777,214 hosts per network.

@Newshound is right about streaming video & cloud backups consuming bandwidth. The cameras not so much. Check WiFi collisions and re-transmisions due to interference from neighbors WiFi or a rogue appliance (usually printers) sending continuous broadcasts.

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I would definitely worry more about connection limit than anything else. For certain things that take up a connection but don’t take up nearly anything for bandwidth in the iot universe such as the plugs people forget that even though they don’t use bandwidth they’re still that connection and processing power from the router to keep them online and keep the heartbeat to them. I bought a Linksys ax 4200 router system and it’s overkill for what I need and it’s rather expensive in comparison to some systems but it’s capable of holding more than enough connections for my setup. And that was the issue I was having in that I had devices that would randomly go offline. Little did I and very much to my frustration…connection limit

And if you are looking to get a new system. With the proliference of the new band coming out, know that Wi-Fi 6 is good. It will work with Wyze products. It operates on the 2.4 and 5 MHz frequencies. DO NOT BUY A WI-FI 6E SYSTEM. Pay close attention to the letter E. If it has 6E, this signifies that it is using a different frequency in the 6 MHz band and currently the Wyze products do not contain the radio to accept this frequency. At current iteration only brand new phones and other very new equipment have the radio in them. But those routers are gaining more and more popularity so be aware that Wi-Fi 6 is good, but Wi-Fi 6E is incompatible.

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I concur with @Costomer

Very good information.

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