Why local recording beats the cloud for security cameras
Cloud cameras send your video over your internet connection to a company's servers. A local recorder keeps it in your home, uses none of your upload bandwidth and lets you decide who sees it.
Two ways to store camera video
Camera video has to be stored somewhere: on a company's servers, or on a recorder in your own equipment closet.
Cloud cameras are the ones most people know: Ring from Amazon, Google Nest, Arlo, Wyze and Blink. They connect over Wi-Fi, many run on batteries, and they cost little to buy, which is a big reason people choose them. When the camera detects motion, or all day on some plans, it sends video through your internet connection to the company's servers. You watch it in their app, and keeping more than a short history usually means a monthly subscription. Without a Nest Aware plan, Google keeps event clips for three hours.
In a local system, wired cameras connect with a single network cable that carries both data and power, a standard called Power over Ethernet (PoE). Each cable runs back to a network video recorder (NVR), a box with its own storage that lives in a closet or equipment rack. Every camera records to that box around the clock. Video leaves the house only when you open the app to watch.
In a cloud system, recordings travel out through your internet connection before you can watch them. In a local system, recording stays on the wired network inside your home.
Cloud cameras use your upload bandwidth
Internet plans are sold on download bandwidth, but cameras depend on upload bandwidth.
Streaming a movie pulls data into your home. A cloud camera sends data out, and most plans give you far less bandwidth in that direction. Google's own support page says most internet plans have less upload bandwidth than download bandwidth, and it tells Nest owners to check that their plan can support the number of cameras they have.
Ring recommends 2 megabits per second (Mbps) of upload bandwidth for each 1080p camera, 10 Mbps for each 2K camera and 15 Mbps for each 4K camera, and tells owners to add those figures together for every device. Eight 4K cameras would need 120 Mbps. Your video calls and everyone else working from home share that same connection.
Then there is monthly data. A single Nest Cam IQ used roughly 400 gigabytes of data per month at its highest settings, according to figures reported when Google lowered camera quality in 2020. Some internet providers cap monthly data or charge extra when you go over.
With a local recorder, cameras send full-resolution video over the wired network to the NVR, and your internet plan never carries it. When you check your cameras from your phone, the recorder can send a lighter, lower-resolution stream, and it uses bandwidth only while you are watching.
If the internet goes down, recording continues. With the recorder and network switch on battery backup, cameras keep recording through an outage, which matters during hurricane season.
Ring's per-camera figures, added up for eight cameras. A local recorder sends nothing out while it records.
Who else can see your video
When your recordings live on a company's servers, that company's policies decide who else can reach them.
In 2023, Amazon paid $5.8 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that Ring employees and contractors had improperly accessed customers' private videos. Ring also lets police request footage from owners through its Neighbors app, and its facial recognition feature led to a class action lawsuit in 2026.
Every cloud company sets its own rules and can change them. With a local recorder, your video stays on a storage device in your home, and anyone who wants it has to ask you.
With local recording, your video stays in your home and every login goes through a recorder you control.
What local recording asks of you
Local recording has trade-offs, and a good installation plans for each.
The first is price. A local system costs more up front, because you buy the cameras, recorder and wiring outright. A cloud system spreads its cost into monthly fees that never stop. At today's price, Nest Aware Plus comes to $2,400 over ten years, and many local systems stay in service for more than a decade. Count those fees and the privacy you give up, and the costs even out.
The recorder is a physical box that someone could damage or carry off. We mount it in a locked rack or closet, out of the obvious places an intruder would look, and put it on battery backup. If you also want a copy offsite, IC Realtime's IC Cloud service can mirror recordings from the NVR as a backup, so a second copy exists if the recorder is ever lost.
Remote access needs care too. Use unique passwords, keep firmware current, and put the cameras on their own section of the network, apart from your computers and phones. Wired cameras take more planning than a battery camera stuck to a wall. Cable is easiest to run during construction or a renovation, though an experienced installer can often route it through finished walls.
What to look for in a local recording system
Recorders vary from brand to brand, but the better ones share a few features.
Look for a recorder that handles 4K video and has Power over Ethernet ports built in, so cameras plug straight into it. Artificial intelligence (AI) on the cameras and recorder should pick out people and vehicles from other motion and tag those events, so you can find a clip without scrolling through hours of footage. Support for ONVIF, an open industry standard, lets the recorder accept cameras from other manufacturers.
IC Realtime, one of the brands Interseckt installs, is one example. It sells only through professional dealers, and its recorders offer each of these features. You can watch live and recorded video from your phone or from its license-free software on a PC or Mac, and its IC Cloud service is available as an add-on for offsite backup.
Questions to ask before you choose
Whatever system you are considering, get answers to these four questions.
Where is the video stored?
On a recorder in your home, on a company's servers, or both? Find out who holds the main copy.
How much upload bandwidth does it need?
Get the total for every camera together and compare it with the upload bandwidth on your internet plan.
What happens when the internet goes down?
Ask whether the cameras keep recording during an outage and whether the recorder is on battery backup.
What does it cost over ten years?
Weigh the upfront price of a local system against a decade of subscription fees. Nest Aware Plus, with 10 days of 24/7 history, is $20 a month.
Plan a camera system that records at home
Interseckt has designed and installed technology for homes and businesses for more than 25 years, across Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Collier counties, and in Nassau and the wider Bahamas.
We can look at the cameras you have now, check what your internet plan can carry, compare the long-term cost with a cloud plan, and design an IC Realtime system that records in your home. Tell us about your property and we will be in touch.