Evaluating the whole IP camera traffic

[luiz.d]

Hi. My first post here. I looked for similar questions but not found. I apologize if the question is duplicated anyway.

I want to check if my router supports the whole camera traffic for Zoneminder by evaluating the traffic amount.

My setup is:
- 3 IP cameras connected to router using regular UTP ethernet cables cat 5e.
- the router is: TL-WR940 N. It is a wifi router with 4 ethernet 10/100mbps ports and +1 Wan port. The manual says it is a 450 mbps router.
- the 3 cameras are connected in the 3 ethernet ports
- a dedicated PC Ubuntu 16.04 server running ZM 1.30.4 is connected in the last ethernet port
- Each camera is set to 10 FPS and resolution of 320x240. In ZM the color space of all cameras (mode monitor) is 24
- In ZM, each camera is set as a HTTP monitor

I used to access ZM by the web interface connecting my laptop in the router throught WIFI.

So my math is:

3 cameras x 320 x 240 x 24 x 10 FPS = 55296000 bits each second or 52.7 mbps

It is 11.7% of the router specification capacity (450 mbps)

My question is: is the traffic amount properly evaluated? If not what I have missed?

I really appreciate any explanation!

Thank you,
Luiz.

[bbunge]

I dont think you have to worry about capacity in the 10/100 switch the router has. I run 17 cameras through a 100 port on a switch withno issues. Your 450 refers to the N WIFI which can be achieved by using 40 Mhz bandwidth with the right WIFI card in the computer. Most laptops are lucky to get 130 Mbps. Use 32 bit color and set the frame rate at the cameras to 5 fps which is good for security cameras. If you need more wired con ections get a small switch to add to the router. There are come good routers on the market for about a hundred bucks like the Asus RT-AC66U_B1

[iconnor]

Development builds of ZM will actually list the amount of traffic used by each camera with a total at the bottom.

[luiz.d]

Thank you, @bbunge and @iconnor. I sincerely appreciate your answers and explanations.

"If you need more wired connections get a small switch to add to the router. "

Yes. The origin of my question is because I did exactly it. I tried to expand my setup plugging a d-link switch in a eth port in the router and connected only a more one camera in the switch. After this change I just started to experience performance problems (package loss).

I managed to solve the problem replacing the router (TL-WR940 N) by a different one (TL-WDR4300). Now I'm working with 640x480 and 32 deep with 20 FPS with no trouble.

However, I'm still looking for a way to evaluate the traffic for the cameras and check (not experimentally) if the router/switch is suitable or not just comparing the specification.