Solutions to streaming issue because the local network is saturated

[stampa.ale]

I have installed tourist live cams in public activities such as restaurants and hotels and sometimes the streaming stops because the local network is saturated due to the many customers connected to the network.

What solutions do I have to solve this problem?

1- Can I dedicate a percentage of the bandwidth to the LAN port where the webcam is connected so as not to suffer from bandwidth saturation?

2- Can I divide the internet connection into 2 private networks and dedicate percentages of the bandwidth? One network for the webcam and one for clients.

What tips do you have to solve it?

 

[bp2008]

1. I don't know of any hardware that offers this easily. Usually when a router or wifi access point offers bandwidth controls, it is implemented as some kind of limit (either a per-device limit or a per-stream limit), not implemented as a bandwidth reservation. I use TP-Link Omada at home and with it you can define different rate limit profiles, and assign different profiles to different devices.



So for example if the internet speed is 50 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload, you might limit any individual user's speed to 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up so that no one person could saturate the internet connection. This makes it far more likely that your IP cams will have the upload bandwidth they need.


2. Yes, I use pfsense for my router, on hardware similar to this: Fanless 4x 2.5GbE Intel N5105 i225-V Firewall Tested

It is complex but highly configurable, so you could have one port be the WAN, and have 3 separate LAN ports, each isolated and using a different IP address range, each with different bandwidth limits. Traffic Shaper — Limiters | pfSense Documentation

So for example at my home I have about 40 Mbps upload speed. Ideally you don't want to use 100% of the available speed in either direction because that is what starts causing buffer bloat and packet loss. So I have a limiter for upload that specifies that only 35 Mbps can be used.



The router tries to spread out that 35 Mbps fairly. So if only one thing is using much upload bandwidth, it will get all 35 Mbps. If two things, then each gets about 17 Mbps. 3 things, each gets about 11 Mbps, and so on.

But if I chose to, I could instead set a limit of, say, 5 Mbps for the LAN 1 port, and 30 Mbps for the LAN 2 port, then if I plugged just one device into LAN 1 it would effectively have 5 Mbps of upload bandwidth reserved just for it.

 

[stampa.ale]

Thank you so much, I will study your valuable information.

 

[ludshed]

Qos or manually set, you might need to install 3rd party firmware such as tomato or ddwrt to accomplish, depending on router/ap. But for scenario you’re describing; restaurants where every couple and their kids iPads want to stream YouTube, I cut them down so low they’ll probably use their own cellular if the location doesn’t have a gig Upload speed.

 

[spuls]

I would recommend to use a CDN in front of your cameras (cdn77k, vbrick, cloudflare,..). Then you only need the bandwidth for a single stream and do not need to expose your cameras to the public.

 

[looktall]

But for scenario you’re describing; restaurants where every couple and their kids iPads want to stream YouTube,

This is going to be the biggest battle.
Unless you can reserve a dedicated amount of bandwidth specifically for the camera, you will always be at the mercy of the customers.
It's going to depend a great deal on the type of networking equipment your clients are using.
If they're using consumer grade gear you're probably not going to have the options available to you that you need.