To many 2.4GHz wireless cameras or to much traffic for router?

[cmitche]

I have five hikvision cube cameras model DS-2CD2432F-IW and i'm using a netgear r7000 router.

If i use all 5 the video signal drops in and out but if i use only 4 it seems to work fine until i use another device that uses the 2.4GHZ band like a old tablet.

They are steaming to blue iris. Would 4 or 5 Ip cameras be enough to max out the 2.4Ghz band of the router causing it to be maxed out?

My newer devices that use 5Ghz seem to work fine.

These are the stats BI shows for the 5 wireless cams

Cam 1 uses 67.5 kB/s
Cam 2 uses 101.6 kB/s
Cam 3 uses 255.8 kB/s
Cam 4 uses 250.0 kB/s
Cam 6 uses 166.1 KB/s

That does not seem like enough to max out 2.4 band?

All my other cameras are hard wired and have zero issues BI shows the totals at 5701.68kB/s and 640.0 MP/s

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[samplenhold]

Would 4 or 5 Ip cameras be enough to max out the 2.4Ghz band of the router causing it to be maxed out?

Yes.

 

[cmitche]

Yes.

How would you overcome this issue besides using hardwired? I have tired a mesh system and since my house is not very large all the cameras would still connect to only one of the mesh points causing the same issue.

You would not think that only 5 cams would be to much but what do i know.

 

[Rakin]

Make sure all your access points are transmitting on different non overlapping channels.


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[samplenhold]

How would you overcome this issue besides using hardwired?

It is recommended here to not use WIFI for security cams. There is no way around that. WIFI is fine for your iPhone and other items that only communicate intermittently through the WIFI. But cams send data continuously and when packets get dropped, they resend them. A couple of cams can quickly overwhelm any home WIFI setup.

Read the Cliff Notes and WIKI. Also you can do searches here on this subject. There are many threads on it. You are not the first person to ask about it.

 

[IAmATeaf]

One possible solution is to have multiple WiFi repeaters connected via cable all configured to use differing spectrums and differing SSIDs. Then configure the cams to use specific SSIDs but you may end up having others issues if the repeaters end up overwhelming another. You’d have to try and see if helps.

 

[SouthernYankee]

I have posted this before.

I did a wifi test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a wifi analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate SSID and access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a wifi network. Wifi is find for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.

Note also that wifi does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So you devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.

Test do not guess.

===================
If you insist on using wifi for your cameras, set up a completely different wifi network for the cameras using an wired Access point, A different channel and a different SSID then your home network. Look at using two access points for 5 cameras.

 

[JNDATHP]

You might want to upgrade your network. When we replaced our Netgear R7000 router with all UniFi equipment we have no problems with WiFi. It is an investment (meaning it will cost some money) but we will never go back. Out network is rock solid.

We have 54 clients connected to our network with 27 of them using WiFi.

 

[IAmATeaf]

But how many of those clients are cams?

 

[SouthernYankee]

Most IP cameras use 802.11G wifi.
For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ wifi network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real world speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel. Again the more devices colliding, the slower the rate.

If you insist on using wifi the easy way to work around your problem is to use a wired access point, on a different channel and SSID. You can use an old router, if it is configurable as an access point. In my tests I used a RT-N12D1 which cost about $30.00. You can use a very old wrt54g router, about $20. You can use two wired access points on different channels and SSIDs, reducing the load and collisions

 

[cmitche]

Funny you should say UniFi . Originally i went out and bought a UDM Pro with two AC-Pro's and i had the same issues with 5 wireless IP cams.

I had bought it since they claim to handle a huge amount of clients as i have 50 and growing.

It worked fine but did not fix my issue so i did not keep it.

You know how UniFi says "everything is good 93%" mine would go down to 60% when i put my wireless cams on it.

 

[JNDATHP]

But how many of those clients are cams?

Just two but other wireless clients include video streaming.

 

[Rakin]

Funny you should say UniFi . Originally i went out and bought a UDM Pro with two AC-Pro's and i had the same issues with 5 wireless IP cams.

I had bought it since they claim to handle a huge amount of clients as i have 50 and growing.

It worked fine but did not fix my issue so i did not keep it.

You know how UniFi says "everything is good 93%" mine would go down to 60% when i put my wireless cams on it.

I have unifi network. My cameras arnt on it because I keep my cameras separate from my network. They are also all wired like all cameras should be. WiFi is for mobile devices and things that don’t have a wired connectivity option.

I work on internet in residential and businesses for a living. What I find is most everyone has to high of an expectation and no understanding of how WiFi and internet works.


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[jack7]

You could try using some power line adapters to reduce your number of 2.4ghz wifi cameras.

 

[cmitche]

Looking back i wish i would have kept the UDM-Pro but it cost a lot more than a simple r7000

I have unifi network. My cameras arnt on it because I keep my cameras separate from my network. They are also all wired like all cameras should be. WiFi is for mobile devices and things that don’t have a wired connectivity option.

I work on internet in residential and businesses for a living. What I find is most everyone has to high of an expectation and no understanding of how WiFi and internet works.


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Even UniFi could not do 5 wireless IP cams when they claim there AP's can do 250 clients.

My house is built on a concrete slab with no attic or crawl space which makes it hard to hardwire them without drilling holes in the walls and that is something i don't want to do. My garage is a completely different story.

 

[cmitche]

Just two but other wireless clients include video streaming.

It did not work for me with 5 streaming to BI.

 

[biggen]

Looking back i wish i would have kept the UDM-Pro but it cost a lot more than a simple r7000


Even UniFi could not do 5 wireless IP cams when they claim there AP's can do 250 clients.

My house is built on a concrete slab with no attic or crawl space which makes it hard to hardwire them without drilling holes in the walls and that is something i don't want to do. My garage is a completely different story.

An electrician told me a long time ago that there is always room to run wires. Just have to do it or hire someone (electrician/low voltage installer) to do it for you.

I have the same style house - Slab with no real storage in the attic. But I spider monkey'ed myself up there and crawled over beams and insulation to run wires down the inside of walls and cut the outlets for them on the inside of the drywall.

 

[cmitche]

An electrician told me a long time ago that there is always room to run wires. Just have to do it or hire someone (electrician/low voltage installer) to do it for you.

I have the same style house - Slab with no real storage in the attic. But I spider monkey'ed myself up there and crawled over beams and insulation to run wires down the inside of walls and cut the outlets for them on the inside of the drywall.

Worse yet i have no attic it's like a trailer roof....flat.

Back on topic why coundn't a udm-pro and two AC-Pros handle 5 ip cams when it's rated for 250 devices? My house is only 2,000 square feet.

 

[samplenhold]

It's not the distance or the number of devices. It's the amount of data. Each cam sends data continuously. And this is not an 80 byte line in a text document. It is large data streams. And it has to be received correctly, no errors. If there are errors/collisions, then the data is retransmitted. This retransmitting increases the amount of data being sent so more packets get lost. A viscous cycle. This causes video to be jittery, jump, or even get the dreaded 'no signal'. Ratings for number of devices just means that the switch can handle that many specific independent devices. But most of them are not transmitting continuously. And if they are, the stream is not that great.

 

[SouthernYankee]

@cmitche

If you continue with only one SSID and channel , it will NEVER work. The number of device support is pure CRAP, those devices are not continuously transmitting., it is just the address range. The problem is network traffic on a single channel and SSID. READ my previous posts. I have tested wifi 2.4 Ghz with cameras. Your network is overloaded.

The best description (used previously by someone else) of your problem is a large room full of people talking at the same time to one person. As they are not heard they start repeating them selves louder. So there is little to no valid communications.