Cameras and Bandwidth

@Uptown Something is going on other than your size of your internet pipe. With good old AT&T Uverse, I am only at 80 down and 20 up and 2 outdoor cameras, 3 SImplicams and a doorbell pro all work fine.  Have you used the connection check tool on each of your cameras? It is very good at determining issues.  As far as I know there has been no increase in load requirements from SS, so highly recommend using the connection check tool and then calling SS support to discuss the results and troubleshoot further.

Hi @Uptown ,

No, there hasn't been any changes in bandwidth requirements. For 1080p streams, we still recommend 2mbps (upload) per camera. But even if you had ten cameras, a gigabit connection should have way more than enough to support - and your data supports that.

Signal strength is a whole different thing - that's more about how successfully the signal can navigate the physical space within your home. But unless something new had been introduced into the environment, there shouldn't have been a sudden shift, either.

You mention that this all happened after a specific update. How long has it been since your cameras have been misbehaving? All three camera models are actually on separate firmware. so no one update should be able to affect all of them. But there could be something in common.

I'm a little fuzzy on exactly when it started other than shortly after an update, maybe the one before this. It could very well be with AT&T fiber but they sure wouldn't agree. 

Edit: I posted this yesterday but it went through as private so not sure who did or didn't see it. Reposting here.

A few things worth noting that may help w/ troubleshooting:

1) As @davey_d pointed out the cameras are on different firmware versions and release dates and are separate from the firmware updates of the base station. You really have to be paying attention to notice the camera firmware versions have changed in my experience. So just because your base station had a firmware update doesn't mean your cameras did.

Note: Hey @davey_d do y'all have a single page for firmware versions for cameras? If not can we get one? People want to know what the latest versions are so they know if they need to worry about an update or not. (Even though w/ cameras it's not a manual process, sometimes they don't update super quickly)

2. Whenever you're talking about a WiFi connection to the internet you're always talking about two distinct pieces - your internal WiFi network and your internet connection. Having a kick ass internet connection (Gigabit fiber, woo woo!) won't save you if your WiFi network is trash and vice versa. More often than not when people today say they're having "bandwidth issues" it's your WiFi network and has nothing to do with your internet connection.  Unfortunately troubleshooting and fixing issues with your WiFi network is also more often than not much more difficult that fixing your internet connection.

3. In addition to firmware updates to your SimpliSafe hardware you may also have updates to your modem and/or router that are a factor in the issues you're seeing. Have either updated recently? Just as importantly, have either of them NOT been updated in a while? You'll rarely have control over the firmware of your modem/router if it's provided by your ISP but if you're providing your own router then it's always worth checking for updates.

4. The 2.4Ghz space is a crowded one and there could be devices in your house or your neighbors causing issues with your devices. (This is not at all as uncommon as people think it is.) Have you recently added anything that uses WiFi or RF in your house? Are there more people at home now using more devices? (WFH changes, kids home from school, etc.) Have you noticed issues occurring more/less frequently at specific times of day or all the time?

5. Are the issues with live view, recordings or both? If it's just live view, have you tried different devices (including a PC or Mac via browser) to see if it's any better? I absolutely would allow for a problem with the mobile app as well until you've ruled it out.

Everything above is sort of generic but I also have one question specific to your set up that ties into #4 above. You mentioned in a previous comment that:

If I move everything to 5 GHz except SS since they only run on 2.4 GHz, I don't have any issues and I have the same setup I've had for 4 years.

I'm reading this to mean that if you move everything off your 2.4 GHz network except your SS cameras then the cameras work just fine. Is this true? If so, that leads me to believe that the concept in #4 above may be worth thinking about. It may also be worth a) setting up a guest network and putting only your SS stuff on it and b) prioritizing your SS devices if your router allows for that.

Is there any other information you can provide other than the questions I've already asked? Specific details or error messages? Is the issue specific to live views vs. recordings or both? Have you tried doing a hard reset and re-pairing the devices to see if that helps? Why do you think it's a bandwidth issue and not a latency issue or something else? (I'm not suggesting it's not bandwidth, just curious what your logic is.)

I was having an interesting problem?? or not sure exactly,  as one of my outdoor cameras started showing off line but could go live and reacted to motion but then would show in the app off line again.

My router was probably not in the best location relative to that camera but had no issues since installed

a year or so ago.

Battery is 89% and signal -60dB and upload speed passed troubleshooting test.

Sometimes when troubleshooting you have to just try something.

Moved router to be higher and closer to the camera, improved signal to -50db but didn't solve issue.

Started to look at my wireless settings in the router and saw that my channel selection

was auto and defaulted to channel 6. Routers in my neighborhood, while not too heavy on ch 6,  were using their ch 6 as well as ch1 and ch 11. So i set mine to ch 8 that had 0

AP's(access points) with 0 on ch 7 and 9 which is ideal.

Happy hunting in the troubleshooting world of network issues