DVR Requires Reboot for Remote Access

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January 8, 2010 at 3:18 pm #31027
Mike Haldas
Keymaster
A DVR user recently contacted CCTV Camera Pros with the following issue:

I have read a lot of good articles on this site to help me set up my stand-alone triplex 8ch dvr for remote viewing, but still have one minor issue that I can't seem to get any help on. I have the dvr and a linksys router with time warner cable modem. The router is configured to auto IP (needs to be for cable) so I have a dyndns host. I use the port forwarding in the router to forward ports to my dvr and enabled ddns. The dvr is assigned a static IP outside of the dhcp range in the router for my home network. Everything seems to work fine, I can connect internally and externally…except after I connect externally the dvr has to be power

cycled to reboot before the remote view works again. This is really confusing to me, and any suggestions you have to help me are appreciated!

CCTV Camera Pros Response:

Thank You for contacting CCTV Camera Pros. That is a strange issue that you described but we do have a suggestion and some insight.
1. In my experience some routers act strange when you assign devices IP addresses outside of the DHCP server range and also assign port forwarding rules to that IP address. You may want to try an IP address within the range but very high in the range so there is never a conflict.
2. Some DVRs are not very good at handling abrupt disconnects / connection drops. So if by chance you are leaving that connection open when it is not in use and not closing it and your connection is lost, your DVR may think that connection is still open and will not allow another connection. When you reboot the DVR this may be being reset. This is just a theory based on experience with some DVRs that we have seen. Our JPEG DVR sometimes has this problem.
I hope this info is helpful. Please let us know if you need anything else.

Sincerely.

-Mike
January 8, 2010 at 3:42 pm #31942

Anonymous
Inactive

This makes sense…but in the DVR network settings would I leave it to static or dhcp? I am guessing static or how else would I be able to port forward if the DVR ip is changing? The router dhcp server is from 100 to 149, so I could just make it 149 and leave it static in the dvr…right?

As for the disconnects I think you may be right again, as when in the webviewer in internet explorer it doesn't seem to fully disconnect when clicking on that button.

One other question that I have found conflicting info on is that in the DVR network settings it has a ddns function that could be enabled or disabled…it is disabled as I have that function enabled on the router. But it does seem to work when both DVR and router are enabled, but doesn't work when just DVR is enabled. Any thoughts on enabling just in router or both router and DVR???

Thanks for the help and hints…this site is great!

January 11, 2010 at 12:50 pm #31943

Anonymous
Inactive

Ok, so I've tried changing static ip inside dhcp range…works but then after a while it won't work anymore. When I have the ddns settings set in router and dvr, I noticed that at first the status in dvr says "ddns connection ok 14"…but when it's not working it says "ddns connection ok 2"? I have also noticed that when dvr is reset and I check the open port tool on the dyndns site it says port 80 is open and port 8841 is open, but if I go back and check port 80 again it will say "refused"? Any thoughts on this?

I may try and change to dhcp in dvr as well…and take my chances of it not changing much as it's always on, and see if that makes a difference.

I know you can change the http port, well I thought you could…but I've had no luck with that either.

thanks,

January 12, 2010 at 1:21 pm #31944

Mike Haldas
Keymaster

djdeb,

The DDNS and DHCP settings do overlap between the router and the DVR. This is the case for any IP device.

Some routers, like older LinkSys models do not let you setup static IP addresses for devices on your network so you must setup the static IP address for your devices using the device itself. I am referring to internal (LAN) IP addresses right now. I recommend setting your DVRs IP address using the DVR and like you said setting it way up at the high end of your routers DHCP range.

In regards to DDNS settings, again these setting can typically be managed by your router and by each device. My preference and recommendation is to use the router to manage your DDNS settings or to download and windows client and use dyndns.org. I found once that LinkSys was contacting the DDNS service too often and they disabled my account. So I switched to using the windows client (it is a small program that is always running on a windows PC connected to your network) that they provide and I never had that problem again. The downside to this method is the PC must always be running.

Last regarding the HTTP port, some ISPs are strange about incoming requests on port 80 so you may want to change that port if it causes you trouble and you are able to.

I hope this helps.

Thanks.

-Mike
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