bob332

you are getting lan and wans mixed up, or some of the info here is. if it is all on the router side, as in inside your home or office, it is on the lan, and should have an ip address that is like 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x. i am not familiar w/ your particular device, but many dvrs i have seen let you put in the info for it to be a static ip, just put it up high so the dhcp server in your router doesn't try to give out its ip address. there should be a networking area in the menus. being on the lan side, there would be no reason to forward ports, that would be only if you were going to be viewing the data from the wan (internet) side from outside your location. what router do you have?

if you are worried about raid5, go raid6, then 2 drives need to fail for you to lose the array. fwiw, raid5 is extremely safe, imho raid6 is a bit paranoid, but if you have the raid card that can do it, it is just another hdd.

i am in the same boat as you, but i will be getting direct sunligh. i picked up some board cameras that have a operating range up to 50C and was thinking of modeling up a enclosure w/ fan - these will be indoors but in the window sill (?), so they will get some high temps. once i get it all going, i will see how the cameras fair this next summer....

anybody know how this applies to condos and the common area? basically i am going to put 2-4 cameras in the windows (on the inside facing opposite directions) due to an slight increase in theft in the area since the economy is in the crapper. i might duplicate a couple views in a certain direction w/ a higher zoom lense since a couple catalytic converters have been ripped off costing the owners $600-$700 and i can see out to the parking lot from my condo. anything i need to do? or who to contact regarding this situation?