These are the recommended best practices for security, reliability, and bandwidth-efficiency.

Security

1. close inbound network ports (no WAN -> LAN initiated traffic)
   There is no need for port forwarding or P2P/UPnP. Camio Box uses only outbound TLS on port 443.
   
   
2. put cameras and/or NVR on their own network
   Since many cameras/NVRs have weak security (e.g. default passwords, unencrypted admin pages), it's best to isolate them on their own network. You can bridge the camera network to the public Internet connection using dual NICs on the Box gateways.

Reliability

1. Box storage capacity sufficient to handle longest Internet uplink outage
   Box 1510A and above includes a large storage buffer that queues events for upload. Choose your longest Internet outage period from which you want to recover fully, and then calculate the required storage buffer to retain all video for that outage period. For example, if your peak uplink bandwidth usage from 10 video streams with 50% overlap in motion activity were:
   10 streams * 2Mbps/stream * 50% concurrent motion = 10 Mbps = 1.25 MB/second
   Then for each hour of the outage period, you would need in storage:
   1.25 MB/second * 60 * 60 = 4.5 GB/hour
   
   
2. Use DHCP and DNS for Box
   Make your server communication resilient to network configuration changes by obtaining IP addresses automatically (DHCP) and by using reliable and fast DNS servers like Google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
   
   
3. Use the smallest subnet if cameras aren't assigned static IP addresses
   If you're not assigning each camera a fixed LAN IP address and instead are using DHCP, then choose a subnet mask (CIDR) just big enough to include all the cameras. This makes it faster for Box to follow the MAC address of each camera as it obtains a new LAN IP address.

Bandwidth-efficiency

1. Use Variable Bitrate
   Allow the video encoder to do the work in compressing video with VBR.
   
   
2. More than 2 seconds between i-frames
   This setting is often known as "i-frame interval", "GOP" or other terms that relate to the number of frames in between each i-frame. For example, if you're recording at 20 FPS, then your i-frame interval should be at least 40 (2 * FPS).
   
   
3. Use negative zones to exclude unimportant events
   Designate any regions of the scene that are unimportant when the motion is wholly contained within that unimportant region (e.g. passing traffic on a distant highway in the scene) by using negative zones.