Can an IP camera work without internet?

Yes, it absolutely can. Imagine you and your friend are using two toy walkie-talkies in your backyard. You can talk and hear each other perfectly, even if the main telephone lines in your neighborhood stop working, right? That's because you created your own private little radio club.

An IP camera can do the exact same thing. It can talk directly to a recording box inside your house using a local wire or home wifi network. It can keep watching your room and save the video onto a tiny memory card or a local hard drive. The only catch is that if the big worldwide internet goes to sleep, your parents won't be able to log in and watch the video while they are away at the grocery store.

To see how this affects your data storage options, explore our guide on whether IP cameras record continuously.