The present invention relates to the video surveillance field, and discloses a trunk management method and apparatus for video surveillance systems. In the present invention, the connection priority of a surveillance equipment is the highest priority amon/between priorities of all clients, when multiple clients with different priorities access the same surveillance equipment. The connection priority of the surveillance equipment is set as the priority of a new client, if the new client accesses the surveillance equipment and the priority of the new client is higher than the connection priority of the surveillance equipment; the connection priority of the surveillance equipment is remained unchanged, if the priority of the new client is not higher than the connection priority of the surveillance equipment. It is all required to supply a service for each video request of the users when the network bandwidth does not reach full load; the video requests of users having lower priorities will be denied when the network bandwidth is at full load, which can more reasonably utilize the network resources based on the connection management of client priorities to avoid a congestion even a paralysis on networks.