How To Access Your Linksys WVC54GCA Camera Over The Internet
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After posting my how to on embedding a Linksys WVC54GCA cam into a web page and helping people with their’s, another article topic came to mind. It seems many non IT people are really trying to do some things from their home networks, which is great. Accessing cams, hosting web pages, game servers and even some Linux machines hosted on home networks from the internet seems to be a common Google search. It’s pretty amazing to think that many people, who are not in the business of computer networking, know what an IP address is. However it seems many people don’t understand that often times the IP address of their locally hosted computer or device is often not internet routable. Many times I refer to an “internal” network in my explanations. What I mean by this is a network behind a masquerading firewall. Because we are trying to keep it simple here, I will just explain that if your local computer or device has an IP address of 192.168.*.* or 10.*.*.* (* being a number of 0 to 254) you are not able to access if on the net using that IP direcly from the Internet. You are behind a firewall device which basically has two IP addresses, one on the inside (home) and another which is an internet routable or “live IP” on the outside (Internet) of the firewall. Computers and other devices on your network direct their traffic out through this firewall device using it’s internal IP address as the default route (also known as default gateway). The device passes the packets from the internal IP to the external IP and then out to it’s default route. The firewall recognizes that packets will be returning for the machine that just send packets out and routes them into the machine’s internal IP address when they do. OK this is a pretty basic description of a masquerading firewall. There are rules, ports, protocols and connection states that can come into play, but we will save that for another post.
This type of firewall typically does a pretty good job at keeping packets that don’t belong on your network out. Because of this, it is necessary to setup a rule on your firewall device which will allow packets generated from the internet to pass through and find their way to your computer or device, such as an IP web cam. The image above is a pretty typical Linksys screen which allows you to set this up. On this old Linksys BEFW11S4 you can see I have a couple of ports allowing remote desktop protocol and I also have JetDirect printing forwarding through. Note: This is not my home router, so please don’t bang away on my home network on these ports. This is just a sample image used for this example You must specify the correct port number for the service you wish to forward through. You can select to allow TCP, UDP or BOTH. If you are unsure, then select both. You must then fill in the IP address of the “internal” machine or device the service is running on. For example if your Linksys WVC54GCA cam is running on port 80, which is not using the alternate web port feature, and it’s IP address is 192.168.100.100 you would fill these details in to allow traffic generated from the Internet to access your cam. To access your cam, computer or network device from the Internet, you need to reference the (live) IP address on the the Internet side of the firewall. Keep in mind that some ISPs do inbound port 80 traffic, in which case you must use the Alternate Web Access Feature and change on the cam, setting the port to something like 1024. You would then need to make the same change to your firewall settings. Another thing to consider is that your (live) IP address can change, so you might consider looking into a dynamic DNS service like no-ip.com |
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Pastan:
Great information I have been trying to get my linksys on the internet for 2 wweks. I have been trying 192.168.1.100 from everywhere. Now I got it, so simple, but I never knew.
Pastan
10 August 2008, 10:03 pmMark:
Hi Pastan, thanks for the comment. This seems to be a common issue for many people.
12 August 2008, 8:03 amUltra Technology Solutions - » Blog Archive » Remote Access Options for Accessing Your Computer or Server Remotely (Part 1):
[...] Contact Us « How To Access Your Linksys WVC54GCA Camera Over The Internet [...]
12 August 2008, 10:30 pmkasey:
thanks a heap just tried this for one camera and it works great!!!
next i am going to put up another camera and see if i can access all the cams..
lovely explanation so thanks again!
4 October 2008, 5:35 amMark:
Hi Kasey, what you would need to do is set the other cams up on different ports. Use the alternate web port feature.
Give a yell if you get stuck.
Mark
4 October 2008, 6:51 amKasey:
Thanks for the advice will certainly do that!
5 October 2008, 9:24 pmAny suggestions for port numbers that tend to work behind corporate firewalls… 80 certainly doesn’t work from my office
Kasey:
Mark I have been messing around with the cams and port forwarding for the lest few days and can see the cameras as well as the videos externally. Whats even more cool is how much I’ve learnt about my network and how internal and external networks communicate. What REALLY bugs me though is that I can’t see my video from work – I can see the video from the other cameras you have linked to on your site though. I can log in to my camera, pan and tilt it, take snapshots but just no video… any thoughts/suggestions? If not dont worry I’ve come a heckuva long way already with your guides!!
8 October 2008, 12:31 amKasey:
Have been bashing away for the last two days with absolutely no luck unfortunately. The camera I’m using (Dlink) seems to be using some streaming protocol which is likely being blocked by the network at woerk (QoS throttling UDP traffic praps?). I’ve tried researching and using different http and rtsp ports but no luck.. will post back if i ever do make it work, but am throwing in the towel on this one since I can just nip down to the coffee bar downstairs and view the cam on my wi-fi laptop…
10 October 2008, 6:08 amHolden:
THANKS! Just putting a little accurate info out there will probably help me and a great many others!
10 October 2008, 9:14 amkasey:
ok just in case this helps anyone, I have a home cam setup with multiple cameras behind a Linkysys WRT54G wireless router. I’m using the dlink dcs 5220 cameras (cant get the linksys ones where I live) and I’ve now sucessfully set them up based on the advice from this site. They work fine externally from anywhere apart from my work PC. Here are some lessons learnt (which I’d have gotten right if i read Marks posts carefully first time round!)
1. You only need one camera setup for a DDNS account (if you have dynamic IP) {doh – i thought i needed one for each cam!}
2. Each camera has to have TWO ports changed and then these must BOTH be forwarded in the router;- in my camera these were both under the network tab and called the HTTP port and something called the RTSP port (maybe some cams work fine with just changing the http port). If i didn’t change the RTSP port what wud happen is that I ended up accessing one cam but seeing the video from another on screen!!
3. Change the ports on each cam so that no two cams end up using the SAME ports {doh}
4. Access each cam externally by using the ddns address followed by :1025 or whatever http port you’ve used for that cam
and thassit!
Also, the videos won’t work from macs (some activeX issue from what i gather but that’s probably peculiar to the dlink cams)
Just a word of caution that this advice maybe relevant for the dlink cams only!!
Next project: Adding a NAS!!!!
Thanks again to Mark for this fantastic site!
11 October 2008, 1:34 amMark:
Hi Kasey, I am glad you have found the site helpful. I have not had much time to get back to it. Are you still stuck on anything? Thanks for contributing your information often also! I am a skimmer, I rarely read through anything fully the first time, so I am with you there. It’s more fun to just jump in and do it. I did review a NAS, but pretty much skimmed the surface on it. If you end up getting a Buffalo (I know I had never heard of them either) I might be able to offer some help. Any thoughts one new articles? What other info. might people find useful that is not already in abundance out on the net? Once thing I am trying not to do is duplicate info. that so many other tech. help site already offer.
Have a great weekend! It’s cool here in Maine, but great BBQ weather!
Mark
11 October 2008, 7:14 amRandy:
Hi -
Forgive me if I am a little slow on understanding this. So if I set my Linksys WVC54GCA Camera to IP address 192.168.100.100 & port 1024 then what would I enter in my web browser to access the camera via the internet?
Thanks
23 October 2008, 3:34 pmMark:
Hi Randy, if you want to access your cam from somewhere else, you would need to access your firewall/router and setup port forwarding. You then need to access the firewall using either the outside IP address or use a dynamic DNS service like no-ip.org.
For example, if you log on to your firewall (probably using 192.168.100.1) which is what I would call the inside IP address. Setup the port forwarding as mentioned above to 192.168.100.100. While on your firewall interface look for another IP address. This one will not start with 192.168 and is what i call the outside address. This would be the IP that you would use to access your cam from the Internet. However, most residential DSL and Cable providers issue your IP using DHCP, so this IP address is likely to change at some point which is where the DDNS service can make things much easier.
Let me know if you get stuck,
Mark
23 October 2008, 4:58 pmHeinz P:
Hello Mark,
I am trying to configure how to remotely connect my linksys wireless camera. I have entered all the fields in the Port Range page utility in the router.
Please tell me why I can’t ping my router ip address within home network. I received “request timed out”. But, I can ping my web cam IP address sucessfully. I haven’t tried remotely yet.
Also, pls help me understand what do you mean live ip address. I understood that live ip address is the one Cox isp provider generates a dynamic ip every time my cable modemn is connected.
so when i try remotely, which ip address that i need to enter? using the command ipconfig /all, I obtain the ip address from cox, is this correct?
thanks,
19 March 2009, 2:40 pmHeinz
Mark:
Hi Heinz, when I talk about live IP addresses I mean an internet routable IP address. 192.168.1.1 is not an internet routable IP address, so I sometimes refer to this as an internal IP address. ( See Wikipedia – Private Networks) Many routers have NAT (Network Address Translation) enabled which Masquerades, the internal address(es) behind the live IP address. It could be that your router does not do this, it could be a bridge. The IP address you made your post from was 72.201.*.* (numbers removed) is this the number that shows when you do an ipconfig on your PC?
If you post your cam’s IP here I will test it from here, but will not post it to the comments so others won’t see it.
Mark
19 March 2009, 3:43 pmHeinz P:
Mark,
Ip address 72.201.*.* is not displayed when issued “ipconfig /all”.
I don’t mind email my camera’ ip address, but post it here i am not sure. there are (may be) crazy dudes out there will have a script crack into my camera. Pls, reply my email or give me yours.
Thanks a lot,
19 March 2009, 4:45 pmHeinz P
joe:
So I am newbie to port forwarding. I successfully did port forward my camera, but the silliest question now hits me — what is the external IP address of my camera? What address do I type in my browser bar to see the camera?
Thanks,
23 April 2009, 12:58 amJoe
Mr. Hobby:
any one got a web cam to work with cox cable yet? if so how did you do it. I have a security dvr that no mater what I do can not see the cameras outside my net work on cox. inside the network every thing works great.
26 May 2009, 8:33 pmNawnit:
I am also stuck on access of my WVC54GCA. My network contains ADSL modem and netgear wirless router.
so outside IP address is assigned in my ADSL modem from my ISP ( 127.72.x.x) and the internal address for my modem is 192.168.0.1 and my wireless router ip address is 192.168.1.1.
all my computers and WVC54GCA is connected to wireless router with ip address asigned my wireless router.
WVC54GCA is assigned a static ip of 192.168.1.100.
so now how do I configure the port forwarding..?
1) my ADSL modem has the port forwarding so what server IP address and port IP address I should give..?
2) my wireless router also has the port forwarding, so what ip address and port number I should give there ?
any help is really appreciated.
thanks.
22 June 2009, 1:24 pm