How To calculate bandwidth consumed by cameras

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:

11 Likes