Condominium community internet and no direct IP

[GTT]

We have a seasonal condo in Florida and I have a Dlink IP camera set up to monitor my temperature, humidity and motion detection.

In going into my router settings I notice that the IP address is not what I get if I google my IP. It appears that this IP address is set for a building(s) and users of the service provided by Century Link are assigned a subnet address. I am not currently there so cannot give the full details but as I recall where my IP would be at home it shows 192.169.0.100.

For my home router I have set up remote access so that if needed I can access my router and reboot it as when problems occur with my IP cameras a reboot usually fixes the problem. I wonder if it is possible to access my router in the condo. I realize I probably need to be there to set up if it is possible. I asked Century Link when I tried to set this up but they were of no help. It seems there must be some way to get to the router and camera as when I use dlinks software app it contacts and gets an image or stream.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Currently my camera is down and I now need to wait for a power outage to reboot the router and hope this corrects things and would like to set up the router if possible on our return so I have more control.

 

[Ichinisan]

It's more likely the private IP address is 192.168.x.x

Anyway, it sounds like the complex has a higher-level router doing NAT (network address translation) -- just like a typical home router. The router has the public IP address assigned to it and every device behind the router shares that public IP. Each device on the LAN (local area network) has a private IP address (in this case, 192.168.x.x).

So the main router with the public IP is like a building with a PBX phone system. The IP address is the businesses main phone number. You'd need to know the telephone extension to reach an individual in the building. With the port forwarding feature, a router can basically treat a protocol's port number like a phone extension (this protocol goes to this server behind the router, that protocol goes to that server behind the router...).

Incoming connections to the public IP address would stop at the main router (the one that's assigning a private address to the WAN interface of your personal router) -- unless the router is configured to forward incoming connections to one of the private LAN IP addresses behind it. If the main router has a DMZ setting, setting that to your inside IP (the one that's assigned to your own router's WAN interface) would forward all incoming connections to your router (regardless of port number). Since you're basically doing double-NAT (a private LAN behind a private LAN), your router would also need to forward incoming connections from WAN to a device on the LAN behind it.

If a LAN device is specified in the router as the DMZ host, it receives all incoming connections (regardless of port number) that aren't specifically forwarded to another device. It's safer to forward only the ports your servers are listening on (but you must know which ports to forward).

If your camera is running a web server on port 80 (default for HTTP): The main router will have to forward port 80 to your personal router, and your personal router will have to forward port 80 to your camera.

That said, lots of ISPs block you from hosting servers on common ports like 21, 25, 80, 110, 143, etc. In that case, you might have to set up a rule that forwards a different external port, like 8182(external) --> 80(internal). You wouldn't need to specify the port number to access your web server internally (http://192.168.x.x), but you'd need to specify the non-standard port number when accessing via the public IP (http://x.x.x.x:8182).

Another pitfall would be if the IP address their router assigns to the WAN interface of your personal router changes. If they don't have a DHCP reservation that recognizes your router's WAN MAC ID to always assign the same IP address, it could change whenever their router reboots.

Same with your personal router and the devices behind it. If you don't create DHCP reservations, they would be re-numbered when your router reboots -- which breaks your port-forwarding / DMZ rules. The other option is for your server (network camera) to have its IP address entered manually, but you'd want to make sure the address you use is outside the range of automatic DHCP addresses your router assigns to other devices (to avoid an IP address conflict on your LAN).

If you have no access to the community's main router to configure DMZ or port-forwarding, and nobody there is able to do it for you, you just might not be able to operate a remotely-accessible server without some kind of proxy/tunnel workaround.

 

[JackMDS]

You have to find from the Condo what their Internet public IP is.

If it static they can give you the number, if it is Dynamic they will have to arrange for you a service like DynDns.Org.

You should change the Camera Local IP to uncommon None blocked port (something like 61616), and ask the Condo to open the port toward the local IP of your Camera.

When you put in a Browser the Internet IP of the condo and the port of the camera xx.xx.xx.xx:61616 you will be able to connect to the Camera from any Internet connection in the world.

 

[mxnerd]

Don't know if this will work.

Maybe one way is buy a mini computer that uses very little power, like a compute stick, run Teamviewer on that PC, hook up your IP camera and your PC behind your own router. Then use teamviewer remotely login your PC desktop to view your IP camera. Teamviewer does not require you set up port forwarding. Don't know if it works behind double layer NAT, though.

 

[GTT]

Thanks everyone for the info. Getting something set up with my ISP will be all but impossible. Condo management will not help either because only cable system is negotiated through them.The internet is very convuluted as a company called Broadstar supplies it but uses the previous infrastructure of Century Link. I assume they lease it from Century Link.

The common IP address has not changed in a year so possibly it is static and not dynamic.

One thing that I don't understand is how does Dlink communicate with the camera to get a feed? As it is only communicating when I use the software to access it I am assuming that Dlink has to be contacting the camera through my router in some way.

 

[kevnich2]

If it's using the mydlink cloud service, the cameras are communicating to dlink and you're viewing thru dlink service for streaming. You're not directly communicating with the cameras. I doubt you'll get anywhere with internet as more than likely, they don't give each tenant their own public IP, unless you're actually paying a monthly fee yourself for the service, in which case you should.

 

[JackMDS]

As a long Shot.

MyDilnk.com is D-Link;s own DNSS that the camera connects to from its firmware

Look at the camera's Menus.

If there is a standard setting for DNSS get one (no-ip.com give fes for free).

If the port that it used is Opened by default it might work.

 

[GTT]

As a long Shot.

MyDilnk.com is D-Link;s own DNSS that the camera connects to from its firmware

Look at the camera's Menus.

If there is a standard setting for DNSS get one (no-ip.com give fes for free).

If the port that it used is Opened by default it might work.

I don't have much understanding about DNS so not sure what you mean. I don't understand what you mean by port that is used might be open by default. Are you referring to a port on my router that the mydlink software and app is communicating through?

Are you suggesting I get and set up my own dynamic dns address? would I be able to go through that to reach my router if I can find a port that the ISP has left open?

 

[mxnerd]

One thing that I don't understand is how does Dlink communicate with the camera to get a feed? As it is only communicating when I use the software to access it I am assuming that Dlink has to be contacting the camera through my router in some way.

Don't know what kind of Dlink IP camera you have, but I guess it's similar to DCS-825L?

If yes, then read this setup guide.

https://uhub.netvigator.com/portal/en/pdf/Setup_dlink_DCS-825L_en.pdf

You need port forwarding setup for ports 80, 443, 554. You can do this on your own NAT router. But since you have another NAT router managed by condo community, I don't think they want to setup port forwarding for you on community's NAT router. Without their help, I don't think you can access your IP camera from internet with IP camera alone. And you know most condo community managers are not computer experts.

And the feed you talked about, probably is local WiFi direct connection to the camera?

The MyDlink.com DDNS service, once registered with Dlink, will let you access your IP camera or router using a name you choose, not an IP address if you are behind a NAT router that you can control. But in your case, you are not.

 

[Ichinisan]

One thing that I don't understand is how does Dlink communicate with the camera to get a feed? As it is only communicating when I use the software to access it I am assuming that Dlink has to be contacting the camera through my router in some way.

On your LAN, it would use the internal IP address. If you're talking about some D-Link cloud service, then the camera is acting as a client connecting to D-Link's server and maintaining a connection through them.

 

[Ichinisan]

As a long Shot.

MyDilnk.com is D-Link;s own DNSS that the camera connects to from its firmware

Look at the camera's Menus.

If there is a standard setting for DNSS get one (no-ip.com give fes for free).

If the port that it used is Opened by default it might work.

Regardless of DDNS configuration, incoming client connections can't get through double-NAT and reach his server (the camera) without specific forwarding settings configured in both NAT routers.

 

[GTT]

Thanks for everyone help. I guess I am going to be unable to set up something.

Not sure how well this would work and whether it is bad for a router but if I run the power through a timer and have it shut down daily at least I can then get a reboot.

My router is inexpensive so probably worth a try.