A few weeks ago, we had a user contact our No-IP Remote Support team. The user, Martin, was trying to configure his network so he could monitor his businesses web cameras from home. Martin isn’t a technician, our service was recommended to him by a friend. He admitted that he wasn’t that computer savvy and that after spending hours trying to figure it out, he was ready to throw his computer out the window.
We quickly verified that the No-IP service we set up correctly and determined that Martin was having the same problem a majority of our user’s experience, Port Forwarding their Router. Port Forwarding is the final and in many cases the most puzzling piece of setting up your remote access. It is a stumbling block for many users because documentation is limited and because there are so many different router manufacturers as well as changes between firmware versions.
Even though we are not a router manufacturer, we always like to go the extra mile and do our best to help users when they get stuck. Recently we’ve launched a pilot service that allows our Technical Support Team to remotely log into a users computer and help get our clients online.
Martin agreed to participate in the program and our Support Technician, Alex, emailed him a link to get the remote view support session initiated.
Once logged in, Alex was able to diagnose the problem almost immediately and explained that by default, IP cameras are set to “Listen” on port 80. However, port 80 connections are typically blocked by ISP’s (Internet Service Providers). Alex set Martin’s router to forward port 8080 instead, and he also changed the default HTTP port of the camera to 8080.
After both steps were complete, Alex checked to make sure Martin’s port 8080 was open using a telnet command inside the terminal. Success! The port was open and his network was configured successfully without Martin having to do much more than relaxing and observe.
Martin’s patience and willingness to let our Technical Support Technician remote into his computer allowed him the freedom to monitor his business from a remote location over the Internet. The entire process was completed within 20 minutes.
Martin was ecstatic. And now he can surreptitiously watch his business and all the shenanigans his employees get into when he is not around.
We were ecstatic too.
Just another example of the No-IP Remote Support team going the extra mile to provide bad ass customer service.
Are you having trouble with Port Forwarding? Give our awesome Technical Support Technicians a call today for help!
Help! I too am having trouble with my remote cameras; seems the ISP (Windstream) wants $30 a month to give me a static IP~!!! Of course this is robbery! I have gone into my cameras dvr to try and adjust to the 8080 you mentioned, but could not find a place to do that; should I be going in to the router through my on-site computer or what? should i change something on my remote laptop or what?
Thanks for all you do.
You will need to login to the admin settings on your router and forward the port. You can open a support ticket if you need additional help. http://www.no-ip.com/ticket
Another important step that applies to PC based video systems.is to also set your NIC card to a static IP on your LAN, behind the router. Example: If you use ipconfig, and find your local IP is assiged say, 192.168.1.2, by the router, then set your NIC card properties to this number as a fixed IP, as noted above, the wide variations in routers is very confusing. For initial setup and troubleshooting, often it is easier to open a DMZ at first, get it accessible via the web, then come back and find your specific final setting for more selective port forwarding. Certain ISPs are also more selective about what ports they have open by default than others.
In addition to Jay’s comment, I recommend setting a fixed local IP at the routers end, not on the PC/Mac.
Say for example your computer is turned off and some other computer on the network turns on, there’s a chance that the router will automatically assign 192.168.1.2 to this other PC. but this means that when you turn your original PC back on you will get an IP address conflict. The proper way to fix this is as so:
Open your routers configuration page
Open LAN Setup (or equivalent)
There should be a section called “IP Address Reservation”
What you want to do is that if there is a list of currently attached devices, select the PC you want to fix locally and RESERVE the IP address on the router. That way the router will always give that computer the same local IP address.
This is critical when setting up port forwarding
I am able to view my webcam successfully from internet using the dynamic IP address. But without having PC, and relying on DVR to update the IP address back to NO-IP seems to quite tricky. In spite of having the option set in the DVR to update the dynamic IP address, it is not working. I found that in the DVR menu option screen to set the DDNS entries, there is no provision to enter the main NO-IP website address that has the mapping of my website name and dynamic IP. The dvr has only provision to enter my static address and NO-IP id , password. Initially i assumed that my static address having NO-IP domain name (e.g) mywebsite.NO-IP.ORG is enough to update ..but no luck.. Have you come across such options in DVR (seems to be weird.) ?
Sen
@Sen
That is pretty weird – is there any updated firmware for the DVR? They may have taken that in to consideration since it’s release.
I know of some routers which provide a similar function – you could always get a router which will update the no-ip service .. but understandably, money’s likely an issue.. and it should really be supported by the DVR.
I would check for firmware updates which may resolve the issue (though if you’re not all that technical, may be better to launch a support case with your DVR manufacturer) personally.
Can you give me a phone number that I can call about my account?
775-853-1883