Security cameras

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JOhnH

Touchdown! Greaser!
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I have recently installed some security cameras around the house. Excuse me if I use some bad phraseology.
They are paired to the 2.4ghz band of my router. I can access them on wifi in my house frommy iphone on either the 2.4 or 5.0ghz bands.

But I cannot access them remotely (using cellular or wifi at another location). Actually, sometimes it works just a little bit, but it is really really slow to connect and hangs a lot.

The support line for the Camera says I probably need to turn off my firewall. First, I don't like doing that and Second, it didn't' work. (I haven't' tried rebooting the router since making that change though. I'll have to try that).

I asked the internet provider (who also provided the Nokia router) if I could turn off the firewall for certain devices (cameras), or perhaps on one of the 2.4Ghz bands. (There are two of them, plus one band that is either 2.4 or 5.0).

I guess I'm asking for suggestions, or perhaps a recommendation of a better router where I have more control over the firewall, if such a thing exists.

I have fiber internet. Using FAST.COM on the iphone and sitting about 3 feet from the router,
On the 2.4ghz band I see about 50 mbps
on the 5.0 ghz band I see about 800 mbps

Are these acceptable speeds for 2k video?
 
Absolutely those speeds are fast enough. Netflix just recommends 15mbps for 4k and 5mbps for regular HD.

Keep in mind though that 2.4ghz is much more prone to interference than 5ghz from my experience. Not sure if that's the issue though.

Edit - do you get those speeds when you test near the cameras?
 
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Whose cams? My Ring cams work great but I needed to add a Chime unit to improve reception to the router. Like a range extender but Ring specific.
 
Also - do you know if you can you set QoS using your router? If you've set separate SSIDs for your 2.4 and 5ghz bands, then you can just experiment with that on the specific band that the cameras are on. Maybe try to prioritize traffic from those cameras if possible?
 
JOhnH said:
I have recently installed some security cameras around the house. Excuse me if I use some bad phraseology.
They are paired to the 2.4ghz band of my router. I can access them on wifi in my house frommy iphone on either the 2.4 or 5.0ghz bands.

But I cannot access them remotely (using cellular or wifi at another location). Actually, sometimes it works just a little bit, but it is really really slow to connect and hangs a lot.

The support line for the Camera says I probably need to turn off my firewall. First, I don't like doing that and Second, it didn't' work. (I haven't' tried rebooting the router since making that change though. I'll have to try that).

I asked the internet provider (who also provided the Nokia router) if I could turn off the firewall for certain devices (cameras), or perhaps on one of the 2.4Ghz bands. (There are two of them, plus one band that is either 2.4 or 5.0).

I guess I'm asking for suggestions, or perhaps a recommendation of a better router where I have more control over the firewall, if such a thing exists.

I have fiber internet. Using FAST.COM on the iphone and sitting about 3 feet from the router,
On the 2.4ghz band I see about 50 mbps
on the 5.0 ghz band I see about 800 mbps

Are these acceptable speeds for 2k video?
Click to expand...

Yes, those wifi speeds will support a couple of cameras.

Being able to access the video from outside your local home network basically means opening the firewall (just a few ports on the firewall). Depending on your home network setup/equipment, it may mean opening ports on the modem/device provided by your ISP and also opening ports on your wifi router.

Note that one problem with using wifi for security cameras (by this I mean camera to the recorder) is that some cameras aren't using particularly robust encryption, which can mean that anyone within range of your wifi can take a peak at the live security camera video. Another aspect is that jamming the wifi means no video is recorded. It's hard to be copper (or fiber) for protecting the video from interference.

Which specific wifi router make/model are you using?
 
To access them from outside your wifi (meaning from the internet), they need to upload the video, probably via a 3rd party server (aka the manufacturers website). So download speeds are meaningless. What are your upload speeds?

Also, the manufacturer should have a FAQ somewhere that explains what to allow through the firewall (if needed) to access from outside. Although, if my suspicion is correct, the cameras actually connect to a manufacturer's server and then your phone, etc connects to that as well. Should remove any firewall issues (if the software was built correctly) but you'll still need good enough upload speeds. The fact that you could get it to sort of work makes me thing that's the issue.

What resolution and frame rate do they produce?
 
Note that some fiber internet providers use symmetric speeds, that is, upload and download speeds are the same. ISPs like RCN tend to have coax, with much higher download speeds and slow upload (only 10, 15, 20 mbps).

but also note that live video at 1080p, 30 frames per second, H264 encoding, is less than 7.5 mpbs).
 
Hmmm. I setup Arlo cameras at my dad's house years ago. Video was uploaded to their site so I could view like 30 days of history. I could also watch live, reboot cameras, etc. remotely. I'm 99% sure I never opened a firewall port to do this. I had to install their app on my phone, connect to the local network, login to their site, then register the camera. After that, I'm pretty sure all communications occurred over port 8080 or some other common port.
 
Many cameras will only operate on 2.4GHz.
 
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