Cheapest high-speed internet for security cam system?

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LarryFine

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
My customer is trying to find an inexpensive high-upload-speed provider for remote access for his security camera system.

Minimum recommended speed is 25Mbps; 50 Mbps would be better. What options are there besides Verizon, Comcast, etc?
 
Location location location :LOL: (and commercial or residential?)

'round here, we have sonic.net but they're not on the east coast. There are several look-up services that take a zip code and spit out a list of why might be local enough.
 
Sorry. Where I am: Richmond, VA. And, it's commercial, the landlord of an apartment building.
 
petersonra said:
many places the cheapest for this kind of thing is a cellular provider.
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T-Mob has a 5g offering that might work.

A search on https://businessinternet.com/virginia/richmond gets me comcrap business, verizon fios, earthlink, Ultra home wireless, Crown Castle*, centurylink business, and a lot more.

What's already in the building? Any idea how much data per day to upload?

*looks like a conglomeration, including LightTower which has something like 33k miles of fiber out there
 
zbang said:
T-Mob has a 5g offering that might work.
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I often can get in excess of 300 Mbps downloads from a T-Mobile 5G gateway, but uploads are usually not much more than 10 Mbps. Verizon 5G claims to provide uploads of 50 Mbps typical, if it's available in your area.

For Larry, what's driving the minimum data rate requirement? Resolution, frame rate, number of cameras, perhaps all three? For some applications the frame rate can be reduced.
 
synchro said:
For Larry, what's driving the minimum data rate requirement? Resolution, frame rate, number of cameras, perhaps all three? For some applications the frame rate can be reduced.
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16-channel NVR, 13 to 16 cameras, 30FPS, they recommend 1.5 Mbps per camera, plus 3 for the NVR, thus 25 or better.
 
Larry- is that constant or motion-triggered? Unless there's a strong reason, I'd do motion triggered and only maybe 10-15 FPS; those will cut the upload data quite considerably. Also, does this need real-time upload? Most people don't need that and not for every camera simultaneously.
 
zbang said:
Most people don't need that and not for every camera simultaneously.
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I was wondering the same thing. The purpose of the local NVR is to accept all data from cameras and store to allow for future access. When you log on to the system remotely and look at live views from multiple cameras they are "low quality" then when you open an individual camera they are higher quality. When looking at recordings you are looking at a single camera recording at a time.

If you are trying to record all the cameras to the cloud then you need good upload speed.
 
synchro said:
I often can get in excess of 300 Mbps downloads from a T-Mobile 5G gateway, but uploads are usually not much more than 10 Mbps. Verizon 5G claims to provide uploads of 50 Mbps typical, if it's available in your area.

For Larry, what's driving the minimum data rate requirement? Resolution, frame rate, number of cameras, perhaps all three? For some applications the frame rate can be reduced.
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Most residential packages offer only assymetric service with download speed (much) higher than upload speed. But designated "business" packages will often have a symmetric speed option.
 
GoldDigger said:
Most residential packages offer only assymetric service with download speed (much) higher than upload speed. But designated "business" packages will often have a symmetric speed option.
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Yes, very necessary for businesses especially for cloud based applications.
 
LarryFine said:
16-channel NVR, 13 to 16 cameras, 30FPS, they recommend 1.5 Mbps per camera, plus 3 for the NVR, thus 25 or better.
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No reason to do 30fps. 24 is considered real time. 20 would be fine. Saves a lot of storage space that way, and the vast majority of people can't even see any difference
 
I appreciate and am definitely paying attention to all of your posts.

Does the Varifocal zoom or any of the other features increase the bandwidth needs?

Here is the camera model we're planning on using 13 to 16 of, and its features and specs:

www.lorex.com

Lorex 4K IP Wired Dome Security Camera with Listen-In Audio, Motorized Varifocal Lens and Real-Time 30FPS Recording

The Nocturnal 3.0 Smart IP Motorized Varifocal Camera is a high-performance security solution with real-time (30FPS) 4K recording and Smart Motion Detection. With the latest in Color Night Vision technology and encased in an aluminum exterior built to withstand the harshest weather conditions...
www.lorex.com www.lorex.com
 
(forgive me if I'm preaching to the choir on this)
Bandwidth needed derives from:
resolution (number of pixels)
pixel depth (8-bit / 10 bit / bigger)
frame rate (10 is enough for most security setups)
compression algorithm and its quality settings
(Uncompressed standard-def video uses almost 250 MB/S, but decently compressed can be under 4MB/S.)

With compression, full frames are only sent every so often, the rest of the time it's difference information; so if little or nothing is changing between frames, the compressed bit rate can be quite low. The bit rate for a still image is almost nothing, on average. And different settings on each encoder will yield different bandwidths and image quality.

All that gets to- the lens itself won't increase the bit rate unless it's moving (zoom/aim/focus), which causes the picture to change, which causes difference info to be sent.

I'll also mention that 4k for security cameras is usually massive overkill. Maybe record it locally, but don't try to send it up to the cloud.
 
The plan is to record on the NVR on site, and use remote access to view and manually zoom in on something interesting.
 
Larry, what model of NVR are you using? I just looked up a Lorex 32 channel 4K NVR and it said a minimum upload speed of 5Mbps is required for 4K viewing.

It almost sound like you are looking at the network speed required between the NVR and a switch if you are connecting all the cameras to a separate switch.
 
zbang said:
In that case, 10mbps is probably enough. And as I said, 4k is probably quite excessive for the purpose (unless you're trying to read people's nametags :LOL:).
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The concern is for tenant safety and recording of trespassing or break-ins.
 
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