Tag Archives: bandwidth

How Dropcam Uses Your Available Bandwidth to Instantly Bring You Peace of Mind On the Go

Posted on by

0

Dropcam WiFi security cameras stream video securely to you using your available bandwidth–in other words, your Internet connection. You can view live video of your home, your pets, or your loved ones from anywhere at anytime for peace of mind.

What is Bandwidth

You’ve heard people say “my Internet is fast” before right? Your Internet speed refers to your available bandwidth. In other words, “my Internet is fast” actually means “I’ve got lots of free bandwidth!” The easiest way to understand bandwidth is through the following example.

Bandwidth_highway

Imagine a multi-lane highway with cars traveling over it. The cars are data and the highway lanes are bandwidth. If the lanes are empty, the cars (your video data) can travel up and down the highway quickly and easily. If the lanes are narrow and there’s a lot of traffic, the cars take much longer to travel. Similarly, your video data travels across the Internet to you using your available bandwidth.

The more bandwidth you have –> the faster your data can travel –> the faster your Dropcam security camera shows you what’s going on at home or work.

How Much Bandwidth Does Dropcam Use?

Dropcam uses around 150 kilobits per second (kbps) of your upload bandwidth to securely stream your video. This means that your Dropcam is monitoring what you want it to every second of every day. Unlike similar WiFi security cameras, Dropcam uses very little bandwidth and lets you:

  • Stream high quality H.264 video securely
  • Record video on your Dropcam DVR for peace of mind on the go
  • Review any detected motion or audio in your online DVR

Dropcam lets you instantly watch what you love for your peace of mind.

Learn more at https://www.dropcam.com!

Help

Curious about how much bandwidth you have? Run a Speed Test to find out! Remember, your Dropcam WiFi security camera uses about 150 kbps or .15 megabits per second (Mbps). As a rule of thumb, try to keep around half of your bandwidth free for your personal use!

Resources

Dropcam Support Forum — Will My Internet Connection Support More Dropcams?

Email: support@dropcam.com

Dropcam Brings You High Quality Video Using H.264

Posted on by

0

You have a limited amount of bandwidth at home.  Your internet provider (AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, etc.) gives you a certain amount of upload and download bandwidth so you can surf the web quickly.  How can you make sure adding a new device won’t slow down the connection for your laptop, desktop, iPad, and other devices?

Dropcam video cameras use H.264, a state-of-the-art format for encoding high quality video. You may have heard of H.264 from big names such as Apple or YouTube.

H.264 uses information in the video to lower the amount of data it takes to represent it.  It is a powerful video-compression standard that delivers high quality video at low data rates. With H.264, you can be sure Dropcam won’t take up all of your upload bandwidth and slow your internet connection.

Can’t I use older technologies like motion JPEG?

Other Wi-Fi cameras use motion JPEG - lots of still images moving quickly to show movement. That’s basically an electronic flip-book, or online zoetrope.

This method makes big files.  This means you need a lot more bandwidth to send video, and so you have less for your regular web surfing.

If you want high-quality reliable video to monitor what matters, without slowing your Internet, you need something more sophisticated.

Dropcam efficiently brings you live video for your peace of mind. The magic to this is how Dropcam uses H.264.

How does Dropcam save you bandwidth?

Dropcam uses H.264 to make low-bandwidth streams that still have high-quality video.  H.264 does many tricks using math and software to accomplish this goal.

We’ll talk about one key part of the algorithm: motion vectors.  A Dropcam first sends you a frame of video. Then, it tells that frame how to transform to the next frame. This method takes much less data, so you receive less, yet far more intelligent, data over your Internet connection. You get high-quality video without using much of your available bandwidth.

Intraframe_compression

Sounds pretty cool, right?  Check out our Public Dropcams and see the quality H.264 encoded video.