For organizations managing large-scale video surveillance deployments, controlling bandwidth consumption is a common operational challenge. In bandwidth-constrained environments—such as remote locations, temporary monitoring stations, or sites with high camera density—teams often find themselves forced to trade off between image clarity and network availability.
This challenge is even more pronounced for cloud-based VSaaS (Video Surveillance as a Service) deployments. Synology’s VSaaS solution, Surveillance365, tackles these limitations starting from the underlying architecture, optimizing how organizations use bandwidth so that cloud surveillance systems can run smoothly and reliably—without sacrificing coverage.
Reducing bandwidth requirements at the architectural and system level
Surveillance365 is built around a “low bandwidth, best experience” design philosophy. Whether accessed through the web management console or the mobile app, the system supports NAT-traversal peer-to-peer (P2P) connections that stream video directly from the camera to the client, eliminating unnecessary relay hops and reducing cloud bandwidth consumption.
In traditional on-premises deployments, footage must be relayed through a server even when the client and camera sit on the same network. Surveillance365’s direct connections remove that overhead — and because bandwidth needs don’t grow with each added site, organizations can expand deployments without scaling up their network infrastructure.
Surveillance365 also offers a dedicated Low Bandwidth Mode, which reduces video bitrate to achieve a significant drop in network load with only a minor tradeoff in image quality. For most day-to-day monitoring scenarios, this allows for more flexible use of limited resources and is key to keeping systems stable in constrained environments.
For example, on the 5 MP Synology Camera TC510, Low Bandwidth Mode reduces the maximum bitrate from 3 Mbps to 1.5 Mbps — cutting bandwidth consumption in half. Footage stays clear and usable for day-to-day monitoring.
Flexible cloud connectivity: Bandwidth is only used when it’s needed
Surveillance administrators may worry that many of Surveillance365’s features still rely on a constant connection to the cloud, potentially consuming significant bandwidth. To address this, Synology offers three flexible mechanisms that effectively reduce bandwidth usage:
1. Edge-first storage: Minimal bandwidth usage at idle
Surveillance365 follows an edge-first storage principle. High-resolution recordings are stored locally on the camera’s microSD card, and the connection to the cloud is maintained at minimal bandwidth during normal operation. Bandwidth is only used when an administrator actively views live footage or retrieves recorded clips. This design eliminates the network load of continuous 24/7 uploading, using bandwidth only when it’s genuinely needed.
2. Event Mode: Filtering out redundant traffic
For compliance and auditing purposes, many organizations want to keep a backup copy of important footage in the cloud. However, not every second of footage holds real value for later review. Surveillance365’s Event Mode avoids continuous, round-the-clock backup while still ensuring site security.
When Event Mode is enabled, only recording segments associated with detected motion or specific events are uploaded to the cloud, with the actual upload timing following the schedule configured by the user. For scenes that are static most of the time—such as warehouses, server rooms, or nighttime entrances—Event Mode significantly reduces cloud upload volume and long-term storage costs: during periods with no events, the network carries little to no upload traffic, and only the footage that truly matters gets uploaded in full.
3. Cloud backup scheduling and rate control: Backups won’t compete for bandwidth
Recognizing that large-scale backup uploads often compete with other operational traffic for bandwidth, Surveillance365 offers flexible scheduling options for cloud backup. Administrators can schedule upload tasks to run automatically during off-peak hours and set upload rate caps, ensuring that background backup operations—regardless of daily recording volume—never interfere with normal business operations.
Smart traffic distribution and thumbnail technology: Maximum management efficiency, minimum resource use
Surveillance365 doesn’t just reduce network demands in video streaming and backup—it also optimizes bandwidth usage for everyday operational and management needs.
First, during unexpected incidents or for high-traffic locations, it’s common for multiple administrators to view the same camera feed simultaneously. To prevent edge networks from being overwhelmed by multiple concurrent P2P connections, Surveillance365 supports smart stream multiplexing. When the system detects multiple simultaneous viewers, the camera switches to sending a single stream to the cloud, which is then distributed by the cloud server to all viewers—shifting the traffic load to the cloud and keeping the local network clear.
Second, when searching for key historical footage, Surveillance365 incorporates thumbnail timeline technology. During recording, the system simultaneously captures lightweight thumbnails. When users scrub quickly through the timeline, only these small thumbnails are loaded for comparison, helping users pinpoint the exact moment an event occurred before loading the full video—reducing unnecessary video transfer and wait times.
Finally, bandwidth assessment prior to deployment is often an overlooked planning gap. To address this, Synology offers the Surveillance365 deployment evaluation tool, which helps administrators accurately measure available bandwidth and calculate, based on current network conditions, how many Synology cameras can be supported, the recommended microSD card capacity, and the appropriate amount of cloud backup storage. Capacity planning no longer relies on guesswork—every camera deployment decision is backed by real data.
From architectural design and recording storage configuration to application-layer features and planning tools, Surveillance365 delivers a multi-layered bandwidth optimization strategy. This integrated design allows cloud video services to run smoothly and reliably even in network-constrained environments—delivering a surveillance experience that balances both security and efficiency.
The post How Surveillance365 Optimizes Bandwidth appeared first on Synology Blog.
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Source: blog.synology.com
