Understand How Video Surveillance Bandwidth Management Works

Balancing the amount of bandwidth available with the number of cameras and desired retention time is key to successfully using the Cloud for your video surveillance management. Understanding your metrics and the features of the Eagle Eye Cloud VMS will help you set parameters to create the best user experience.

Bandwidth Basics

You might be asking, what exactly is bandwidth? Bandwidth refers to the available speed of your IP Network. So when you look at your upload and download speeds, you’re seeing your bandwidth.

The more bandwidth you have, the faster your upload and download speed. The Eagle Eye Cloud VMS takes video from a camera and pushes it to the Cloud. So when we talk about bandwidth, we’re usually focused on upload speeds.

The number of things impacting bandwidth will vary from business to business which will change the way each individual manages it.

Bandwidth Metrics

We’re often asked about the bandwidth requirements for the Eagle Eye Cloud VMS. The answer will be different for everyone because it’s determined by three factors.

• Camera Count
• Recording Resolution
• Motion Activity

To understand your bandwidth usage and availability, we have several metrics you can access on the dashboard.

Bandwidth Management in Low Bandwidth Scenarios

We know everyone has different bandwidth and access to high internet speeds is not yet universal. To ensure that anyone can optimize their Eagle Eye Cloud VMS usage, we’ve built tools into the system to help with bandwidth management.

The main way you can do this is by using the Intelligent Bandwidth Management System. This tool will make it easy for you to determine how much bandwidth the Eagle Eye Cloud VMS is using and when it’s using it.

During business hours, bandwidth usage is oftentimes stretched thin to accommodate everyone on-site. In this case, you can tell the system to only move video footage to the Cloud after hours, when bandwidth is more available, resulting in minimal impact on your operations.

Using the Intelligent Bandwidth Management System, you can determine:

• Percentage of Available Network
• Fixed Amount of Bandwidth
• Schedule for Video Transmission

You’ll always have access to your substream (or preview stream) in real-time, but these tools will help you effectively manage the upload of your high-resolution video to the Cloud.

Read more about bandwidth management, resource pooling, and on-demand self-service.