Don't quite understand port forwarding and kudos

[Rio_Grande 0]

I have read the information at port forward . com and have a decent grasp on the practice of port forwarding but I am missing what it actually does. Is it as simple as the port is forwarded past the firewall to open it to input/output.

 

Kudos side of this, I have searched all over and this seems to be the only surveillance specific site who discusses this issue. So thanks for doing it.

 

Thanks in advance.

Jeff

[VST_Man 1]

you are right. simple as in/out

 

look at it this way; you have a sky scraper (PC) with over 65k rooms in it. each has a door, numbered 1 to over 65,000. You need information from outside the skyscraper to get to room 80 inside the skyscraper, which is the common internet HTTP port. The guard at the front door has a "port forwarding list" that allows or turns away data. If that list allows data to room (port) 80 the guard allows the data in........the only door the data can gain entry into is 80, all others are locked. The guard is basically the FIREWALL.

 

and..........all data moving within the sky scraper is automatically allowed access to all doors.......

 

and several skyscrapers (any IP device like a PC, ) in a city (ie. your house) create a larger networl called a LAN Local Area Network. Several Cities create a WAN, Wide Area network. Each skyscraper, city or groups of cities can have one guard or multiple guards....depending on how you set things up.

 

hope this helps..........

[sviviani 0]

this may be a surveillance specific site who discusses this issue, but it is far from a surveillance specific issue. port forwarding is as you said as simple as opening up the firewall, but some isp have the ports blocked as well, so even if you open a port on your router/firewall, you may not be able to use it. port forwarding and or NAT allows you to go from one computer on one network to a computer on another network. with cctv it acts like remote desktop on some levels. So if you are at home and want to work on your server at work, cctv dvr, or whatever you enter your work ip:port number to get to a specific machine. sorry for the long, vague, and simplified answer, but it is a very broad and hard to answer question.

[VST_Man 1]

ahhhh! I forgot to mention the internet police, the "doc", and the red light district.

 

[Rio_Grande 0]

Thanks fellas,,, I appreciate the responses. Guess I did get it, just didn't realize it.

 

I am a bit hung up on this. I am doing a job for a friend and camera installation went great, dvr fired up and was recording in minutes, no power supply problems wiring pulled pretty easy, but I have been 2 days trying to get his computer to talk to the router and vise versa.... I am going to work on it again in the morning and see what happens.

 

I need to disable the router side of the modem and already have the new router in place, port forward then deal with firewall/ software issues.

 

See what else it takes after that.

[VST_Man 1]

some routers have a "enable" check box that needs to to checked or the setting you save are not ENABLED....

 

and, use http://www.no-ip.com or some other port checker to verify your router & ISP are all agreeing.........

 

and, if your really wondering, a better way to do networking is to BRIDGE the modem over to the router..........I've found routers are happier if they have more control of all.................

 

Bridging a modem basically makes yourmodem transparent and your router assume the modems WAN settings.....your LAN still remains the same. One thing, you need to contact the ISP and have them BRIDGE the modem for you since they own it. Most ISP's will allow you to do it via a phone call.

[sviviani 0]

also, have you been able to get into the dvr from a computer on the same network yet. If not that is always my first step. You may have a config issue. You will never get on remotely if you can't get on locally.

[Rio_Grande 0]

I haven't been able to get the other computer on the LAN to recognise the DVR yet. So the plan is to try everything I have leaned about port forwarding and setting the DVR up on the "almost" same IP adress set up the port on both the program and the DVR,, I am sure there are several other things that I am forgetting but have written down to try,, any sugestions will be appreciated..

 

Jeff

[sviviani 0]

you set up an ip with almost the same as others on the lan. is the router set up to recognize that as a static ip, or is it in the dynamic range? if the router dynamic range is 1-50 and you gave the pc an ip ending in 8, you may be getting conflicts. you need to set the dvr outside the dynamic range and set the static address on the router and dvr, or set the dvr to get the address automatically and the the router assign the ip address. hope this helps

[Rio_Grande 0]

It all helps.

 

That is one of the problems. The internet connection coming in is Dynamic, I have spoken to verizon and they have agreed to walk me through the repair to get it to Static. The router and dvr are currently set to dynamic, Need to fix that.

 

Jeff

[Sawbones 0]

It all helps.

 

That is one of the problems. The internet connection coming in is Dynamic, I have spoken to verizon and they have agreed to walk me through the repair to get it to Static. The router and dvr are currently set to dynamic, Need to fix that.

 

Jeff

 

Static IPs are often an additional "feature," and thus an additional charge. I have the business-class service from my ISP, and static IPs (up to several) come with that, but a residential-class connection often has an up-charge for static IP addresses.

 

On the other hand, as long as your cable/DSL modem and firewall stay powered up (mine runs off the same rack-mounted UPS that powers the rest of my networking gear), you may only change IP addresses a couple of times a year with a regular dynamic IP. If that's the case, the additional charge might not be worth it.

[Rio_Grande 0]

Ya they failed to mention that to me on the phone.

 

I spoke to them this morning, this is a business and they have a business account but verizon will not give them a static IP withought a monthly charge.

 

 

Good news is I got the router working and the dvr configured and comunicating with the desktop. I however do not have a static IP, Trying to figure out hiw I am going to get it out on the net,,

 

The backup and never shutting it off is a good Idea,,, wonder how it will work here.

 

I had an oppritunity to review the last few days of recording on the dvr,,, Had some motion sensing issues and not real happy with two of the shots,, but I am never satisfied in the end when it comes to that stuff.

 

I am going to rebuild one housing cause I am just not happy with it.

 

The good news is the customer is tickled with it all. He was excited to sit down and wade through the video,,, Good for them.?

 

Thanks for the replies thus far,, keep them coming..

 

Jeff

[VST_Man 1]

skip the static and use DDNS with http://www.no-ip.com

 

save 10 bucks and give your client a unique url name.

[Harrar 0]

You may be confusing a static IP line from your ISP and a static ip address for your computer. With multiple devices hooked up to your router, typically whenever they are powered on and off, the router DHCP will assign a new internal IP address to that device i.e. 192.168.1.100 thru 255. What you need to do is assign a static IP to your device outside of the DHCP range of your router. As an example, Linksys routers typically start assigning IP addresses starting at 100 and above. IP addresses from 192.168.1.2 thru 192.168.99 are considered static. What you need to do is set your DVR to an address in this range. If it's PC based, go to the control panel and select Network connections. Right click The Local Area Connection and select properties. Select Internet Protocal TCP/IP then click Properties. Select Use the following IP Address. Type in the address for your device i.e. 192.168.1.50 (this will be your static IP address for this device) The subnet mask will default to 255.255.255.0. Enter the IP address of your router as the default gateway i.e.192.168.1.1. Next, select use the following DNS server addresses and just enter the IP address of the router again as the preferred DNS server. Leave secondary blank. Click OK and you've just set your system up with a static IP address. Verify that your router's port forwarding references this new address and you should be good to go. One note though, if you're using a Linksys router, go to the Security tab and make sure the Block Anonomous Internet Requests is unchecked.

 

If you're using a compact DVR the same will be true in setting up this information in the Networking section.

[Rio_Grande 0]

Thanks for the good info.

 

Harrar one question though,

 

The concern I had was being able to access remotely. I am a novice at the networking related to dvr's. My concern was that when the system is powered down, when it comes back up it gets a diffrent internet provider IP, so as I understand it if I don't know the exact IP then I cannot connect over the net,,, I could however be wrong... let me know.

 

I don't have the port forwarding done yet because I do not have the static IP figured out yet..

[Harrar 0]

I'm assuming you have a PC based DVR system. What you will need to do is register your computer with one of the free DDNS servers on line. As mentioned earlier no-ip is one but I prefer to use dnydns as it's client program is built-in to most routers. If you have a Geovision system, this package is included with the software under DDNS. Anyway go to dyndns and set up a free account chosing whatever name you wish and then select an extension (dvrdns is pretty good). Next, download the DNS client software to your PC and run it as a service at startup. DYNDNS has good info and tutorials for setting it up. The client program will constantly monitor the dynamic IP address from your ISP and keep it pointed to your DVR so you can access it using the name you created from anywhere on the web.

 

If your router supports it, you can skip downloading the client and configure the DDNS under the setup tab with the information you used to create your account.

 

Hope this helps.

[Rio_Grande 0]

When one is as uneducated about networking as I everything helps

 

This DVR is a seperate unit from the computer, they only connect through the router.

Need to figure out how to get through the router into the DVR.

[Harrar 0]

If your router is a Linksys or Dlink or one of the dozen or so that support DDNS (check the setup page of the router) you can still register with Dyndns and enter that info into the router setup. One of the options will be the device (LAN IP address) it goes to. You will need to configure your standalone DVR's network settings to a static IP basically the same way I explained previously for a PC and then port forward the DVR specific ports to it

[Harrar 0]

Forgot to add that many standalone DVR manufacturers have a built in DDNS that will reference and update using dyndns so you can enter your registration info into the DVR instead of the router. Check your DVR documentation for this feature.

[Soundy 1]

Rio_Grande, you have two separate issues here: one, your router may be changing up the IPs it gives to the machines on your LAN (including your DVR); two, your ISP likely changes the IP it gives to your router, which is what you need to access your network from "the outside".

 

You have control over the LAN IP assignment (as much as your router will give you anyway), but your ISP has all the control over your WAN (internet) IP, which is why you want to get them to provide a static IP. It may cost a little extra, but it will be WAY less hassle. You can go with any of a number of dynamic-DNS services, as suggested, that will automatically update a named address for you when the IP changes, but I've seen ISPs that force an IP change on an hourly basis, which makes those next to useless (I've seen others, including mine, that only force a change if they reorganize their network, which happens maybe every six months to a year).

 

As for your DVR's LAN IP, if you have access to the router setup, you can minimize problems by increasing the "lease time" to the maximum allowable. The theory is that any machine receiving an IP from the DHCP server, "leases" that IP for a set amount of time (say, 24 hours), and the server basically reserves that address for that machine for that set amount of time. Normally, halfway through that time (12 hours, in this example), the machine will ask to renew the lease, and the count is reset. If, after the lease time has expired, no renewal request has been received, the server (built into the router, usually) returns the IP to its pool, and the next machine to request an IP gets it.

 

Many routers have a "static IP" option (which in reality is a "reserved IP") that allows you to designate that a given IP be permanently assigned to a specific machine. If your router has such an option, you can use it to ensure your DVR's LAN IP never changes, so any port forwarding you set up will always send incoming data to the proper destination.

[Rio_Grande 0]

Well Soundy I must be catching on cause that was the way I was thinking..

 

I am going to work on it tueseday after hours. Hopefully I can get it working.

 

Down side one of the workers found a wire and got to pulling on it and found a camera... so the jig is up,,, Just gotta get it online

[Sawbones 0]

Well Soundy I must be catching on cause that was the way I was thinking..

 

I am going to work on it tueseday after hours. Hopefully I can get it working.

 

Down side one of the workers found a wire and got to pulling on it and found a camera... so the jig is up,,, Just gotta get it online

 

Wait... the "workers?" Somebody didn't know they were being recorded?

 

Careful of legalities... that "candid camera" type stuff is frowned upon in some places.

[Rio_Grande 0]

No audio,, just video here.

[Rio_Grande 0]

Well I am lerning and some of these abriviations are starting to make sense.

 

One question,,, Even if the ports are not forwarded and the server is just sitting there shouldn't I get something when I dial into the server?

 

As is it just times out and says site cannot be found.

the orignal modem router had to be bridged because there were no more ports on it. So it was bridged to the router. Which makes me wonder if I am typing in the wrong IP, Should it be the IP of the modem or the IP of the router?

 

Thanks for helping me out.

 

Jeff

[bigbuilding 0]

I just upgraded our software for our DVR wich includes ability to monitor remotely ofcourse can't login because of this port forwarding thing. I have requested from our IT department to enable port forwarding. Is there any reason they would not do this? Is there a big risk to the entire network doing this?