Beginner with some questions and pics

[m1chael]

buellwinkle or anyone else for that matter-

Will be tackling the daunting task of opening up ports etc on router tonight or sometime this week in order to view ip cams from outside or WAN.

What does everyone usually use for a "naming convention" for their dynamic dns address? (example mycam@dyndns.com, etc)?

Also, more specifically for buellwinkle, do you just use a web browser if you are away from home to access your cams / nvr / etc or what? Do you access from any mobile devices and if so how difficult is that to set up? I know Acti has a mobile app or something but I still need to look into it.

Thanks for any assistance,
Michael

[buellwinkle]

If you are using ACTi Enterprise NVR, you don't need to port forward the cameras, leave them all at their defaults. You only need to port forward the PC running the NVR software. The only reason for port forwarding the individual cameras is if you want to access them from a browser or 3rd party software, for example, I have one setup that way that I access from my Android phone through a seperate app,doesn't work from Chrome.

When I'm away I use a various software, I have so many gizmos. For my ACTi cams, I use their free IOS software that works on my iPhone and my iPad. If I want to view them on my Droid Razr, I use IP Cam Viewer (free edition). When I'm away and have my Macbook AIr, I run the IE browser via WIndows on VMWare Fusion to connect to ACTi Enterprise NVR (not each camera seperate, too much work to port forward each one). At our lake house we have Axis and AVTech, the Axis send me emails, so I view events that way, the AVTech comes with free IOS and Android apps called EagleEyes. Next week I'm playing with a new device, a Motorola Lapdock. It's a screen/keyboard/mouse that looks like a laptop but has no hard drive, no memory, no CPU. You plug in the appropriate cell phone and it boots up Ubuntu on top of Android on my Razr phone and gives me Ubuntu Firefox and I can run Android apps too. The reason is, with that setup, I get a laptop size screen and keyboard, but use the phone's unlimted data plan for no additional costs, handy at hotels that charge $15/day for internet access..
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For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[m1chael]

[buellwinkle]

I would make the port numbers consecutive, the reason is when you setup port forwarding, most routers let you pick a range of ports in one swoop. Most modern routers or dd-wrt software is smart enough to loop back without going to the internet if you access the camera using the WAN IP (either directly or through DDNS) although it still has to connect to the internet to get the IP address so that's where any delay would be. Some are dumb and it will be slower and some don't work at all.

Cam 1 (Dyndns address) my.cam.net:10080

Port 80 = 10080
Port 6001 = 10081
Port 6002 = 10082
Port 8001 = 10083

Cam 2 (Dyndns address) my.cam.net:20080

Port 80 = 20080
Port 6001 = 20081
Port 6002 = 20082
Port 8001 = 20083
_________________
For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[m1chael]

buellwinkle-

Just wanted to report back and advise that I was able to successfully set up all my cams for viewing outside my lan (port forwarding http port 80). Figured I would at least start with that before diving into doing all the ports (6001, 6002, etc) needed for ACTi cams. Basically I used 8000, 8001, 8002, and 8003 so far just for the http streaming. I will work on the rest later.

Anyway, my main question so far is this:

I was able to use my android phone (3G service / outside my LAN) and successfully connect by using the IP Cam View Lite App as we discussed earlier.

Now, I wanted to basically be able to switch over to using wifi either on the phone or using another device within the house (android tablet) using the same app but apparently using the dyndns host name that I set up will not work within my own LAN? I did some research and apparently this is due to loopback or NAT translation?

I was hoping to be able to have this work from within my LAN and outside my LAN using this app without having to change from dyndns host name back to internal ip all the time. Basically, if I went over to my parents house or a friends house and used their wifi, my dyndns host name would prob work fine (becse it works fine on 3G now) but when I come home and get back on my own LAN via wifi it will not work with those settings? Hope that makes sense?

Any work around for this?

Thanks,
Michael

[buellwinkle]

It could just be the DNS. Try doing an nslookup command on dos cmd mode on Windows (or terminal on a Mac) and see if it returns the correct IP address. if not, maybe it's the DNS server you use hasn't updated yet. For example -

C:\Users\carl>nslookup www.networkcamerareviews.com
Server: homeportal
Address: 192.168.0.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.networkcamerareviews.com
Address: 207.58.176.142
_________________
For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[m1chael]

[m1chael]

Just an FYI, if anyone else out there has a "dumb" router like myself that does not support loopback. If you are using the app, IP Cam View Lite or Pro, you can create "groups" to specify whether you are using home (internal IP info) or away (external WAN/Host name info).

I emailed the developer and he made me aware of that so far its working pretty good.

Anyone, just wanted to share.....

Thanks,
Michael