First, a disclosure: Yuxinan is a multi-site networking product made by Siwenlide, so we are a stakeholder in this article. Search this question and most answers come back as “buy monitoring software,” “install an NVR,” or “move to cloud surveillance” — all of them answering “what do you look at on the other side of the screen.” But anyone who has run branch stores knows the real blocker isn’t what to look at; it’s that you simply can’t connect — the branch’s cameras sit on the branch’s own LAN, and the headquarters screen can’t reach them. The conclusion in one sentence: for centralized video surveillance, the hard part was never the screen — it’s the network. First connect the branches and headquarters into one network; after that, what you use to watch is a minor detail.
1. Why the answers you find online don’t work
Monitoring software, NVRs, video matrices, decoders for video walls — none of these recommendations are wrong, but they all share one implicit assumption: the cameras and headquarters are on the same LAN. When the branch is on the east side of the city and headquarters on the west, that assumption doesn’t hold. Type a branch camera’s 192.168 address into your headquarters monitoring platform and all you get back is a spinning circle — that address ceases to exist the moment it leaves the branch router.
So the order can’t be reversed: first solve “how does headquarters reach the branch’s internal network,” then solve “what video wall do we watch it on.” Skipping the first step and buying software directly is the most common way this budget gets wasted.
2. Reaching branch cameras: what the three old approaches cost
- Port forwarding: map the camera/NVR ports to the public internet on the branch router. This requires a public IP address (broadband providers barely hand those out anymore), and worse, it’s a security problem — surveillance devices are a favorite target of internet-wide scanners, and most incidents of brute-forced weak-password cameras and stolen video feeds start with port forwarding. Not recommended.
- Cloud surveillance / 4G cameras: each camera routes through the vendor’s cloud or a SIM data plan and is viewed in the vendor’s app. It’s genuinely low-effort, but you pay per camera per month, which becomes an ongoing rental as stores multiply; playback and parameter changes are also locked inside the vendor’s app, making it a second, separate system alongside the NVR setup you already have.
- Dedicated lines: stable, but the monthly fee is high — not worth it for a business with just a few stores.
3. A newer approach: make the branch “local” first, then talk about centralized viewing
The idea behind the new generation of networking (the route Yuxinan takes) is this: place one networking appliance at headquarters and one at each branch, use direct P2P connections with automatic cloud relay whenever a direct path can’t be established, no public IP required, no port forwarding, no changes to router configuration — and a few minutes later the branches and headquarters are a single LAN. The underlying principle and a self-check method were covered in a previous post, so we won’t repeat them here.
Once the network is up, “centralized viewing” suddenly becomes an ordinary task: in the headquarters monitoring platform or desktop client, you add each branch’s camera or NVR internal address just as you would add a local camera — preview, playback, patrol tours, and video walls all work exactly as they do locally. Keep using whatever software you already have; no need to switch.
4. The bandwidth math: calculate preview and playback separately
The most common way centralized surveillance viewing goes wrong is miscalculating bandwidth. One rule of thumb covers it:
- Preview uses the sub-stream: one sub-stream runs about 0.5 Mbps, so previewing 9 feeds at once is roughly 3–5 Mbps. On a direct P2P connection this isn’t limited by your plan’s bandwidth, and it’s manageable even over relay;
- Playback is when the main stream is pulled: one 1080p main stream is 2–4 Mbps. Who plays back every branch, feed by feed, from headquarters? You pull the stream you’re viewing, only when you need it;
- Make sure the monitoring platform is configured for “sub-stream preview, main-stream playback” — leaving multiple main streams running in preview for hours will overwhelm any network. That’s not a networking problem; it’s a configuration problem.
5. Implementation steps (headquarters plus a branch — half a day’s work)
- Place one networking appliance at headquarters and one at the branch, power them on and register them, then confirm each side can ping the other’s internal network;
- Add the branch camera/NVR internal addresses in the headquarters monitoring platform, starting with a single feed to test the picture;
- Switch the preview policy to the sub-stream, then add feeds store by store, checking smoothness as you go;
- If you need a video wall, connect the decoder to the headquarters LAN and configure it the same way you would for local multi-view.
The most reliable way to validate this is to start with the free edition: Yuxinan’s free trial edition is permanently ¥0 and activated on sign-up, and includes 2 appliance allowances (hardware included) — exactly enough to get a headquarters-plus-one-branch setup working. Once it works, scale up by store count; tiers and limits are covered in what the free edition can do, and where it stops and the cost math for chain-store networking. POS, surveillance, and printing all share the same network, so you don’t buy separate solutions for each — that’s also worked out in the post on POS networking.
FAQ
Q: The branch cameras are different brands — can I view them all together?
A: Yes. Networking solves whether the network is reachable. As long as the camera supports standard streaming protocols (all mainstream brands do), the monitoring platform can add it — brand doesn’t matter.
Q: Will the video lag?
A: On a direct P2P connection, traffic travels only between the two endpoints and doesn’t pass through a third party, so lag depends on the branch’s broadband upload speed. Once preview uses the sub-stream, a normal broadband uplink handles 9 preview feeds without strain. When a direct connection can’t be established and traffic falls back to relay, it’s limited by your plan’s forwarding bandwidth — enough for POS plus a small number of preview feeds; if you need to send multiple main streams back, consider a higher tier.
Q: Doesn’t this expose the headquarters network to the branches? Is it secure?
A: Networking traffic is encrypted end to end, and access control lets you restrict headquarters to only the branch’s surveillance subnet, with POS and office subnets isolated from one another — far safer than port forwarding, which puts devices directly on the public internet.
Q: We’ve already bought cloud surveillance for each camera — can we cancel it?
A: Once networking is in place and headquarters connects directly to the branch cameras/NVRs, the per-camera monthly cloud fee is indeed worth cancelling. We suggest running the network for a month first and confirming playback and preview are smooth before cancelling — don’t cancel before the new setup is in place.
Bandwidth figures are typical industry ranges (sub-stream about 0.5 Mbps per feed, 1080p main stream 2–4 Mbps per feed); your actual camera settings govern. Yuxinan pricing is as published on its official website as of October 2026.
