Most of customers have experienced
two major issues with our PC-based surveillance products
- Firewall and Dynamic IP. These two issues normally
arise when they attempt to remotely monitor the cameras.
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| 1) |
Dynamic IP |
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Who? |
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Generally home users or
customers from under-developed countries would face
this problem because they couldn't afford to get a
Static IP. |
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What's
IP? |
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Just like we all have our own
unique home address. In the internet world, every
computers that links to it must have its own address
and this address serves as this computer's identity.
Since we are still under the reign of IPv4, the
available IP numbers are limited and that makes each
IP address precious and expensive in costs. Most of
internet users can't afford to acquire a Static IP
address simply because it's more costly. Rather,
they would have a Dynamic IP address. That is, every
time you connect to the internet, you will be
randomly assigned an IP by your ISP. You may have a
certain address this time, but next time you logon
to your ISP, you will be given another IP. |
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Solution: |
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Our DVR system supports dynamic
IP so they are both fine. For any other products
that use PC based DVR cards, the users would have
difficulties viewing the live images if they have
Dynamic IP address. We are currently testing a free
service provided by
www.no-ip.com. You sign up to this website,
create your own hostname, and then their server
could automatically maps your current IP address to
the hostname you create in certain intervals (from
every 5 min to......). In this way, even though you
have a dynamic IP address, each time you need to
access "Remote Monitoring", you only have to deal
with the same domain (your hostname), and don't have
to worry about the present IP address. |
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Our initial testing with this
no-ip.com has been successful. However, we still
need to get a dynamic IP connection and try on it
just so we know whether this solution works out. |
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| 2) |
Firewall |
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Who? |
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Generally corporate users or
could be anyone who uses a router. |
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What's firewall? |
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There are two types of firewall
- software firewall and hardware firewall. Nowadays,
most of routers have onboard firewall. The software
firewall could be acquire easily from web. Both of
them work in a similar way that they create a
barrier between private network and the public
network. Each inbound/outbound data packets is
allowed/denied if the certain criteria is met. There
are several methodology used in screening out the
incoming and outgoing traffics depends on different
brands of routers. |
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Solution: |
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1) Port forwarding - You have
to create a "tunnel" so a certain computer within
your LAN can use this specified "tunnel" or "path"
to communicate with outside world.
Which ports to open depends entirely on the
software. For CyberEyes, you can open the ports from
16009 to 16889. For E-Dog Pro, you open ports from
9000 to 9999.
Still, how to configure the router to do port
forwarding differs from one brand to another. You
can suggest your customers to contact the router
company since most companies that manufacture
routers offer free tech support.
2) DMZ hosting - This is similar to port forwarding
but instead of allowing certain range of ports to be
accessible, you open up ALL ports of a computer to a
specific internal IP address. |
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