My 85 year old father, who lives 160 miles from me, now requires 24/7 attendance. Just last week the entire professional care giving team suffered a major meltdown when the 7 to 3 guy had a day off and forgot to leave a key for his replacement. Bottom line is Dad spent three hours alone, in bed, extermely upset. He treied to get out of bed and could not. He almost fell. Had I a web cam I could have prevented the whole incident just by clicking him up on the net early every morning. Please excuse this long preamble but this is important.
We purchased a very nice web server that uses DHCP (or not if you wish) on a LAN and transmits both video and audio. I allready have that up and running on the LAN. Where we need help is in the remote access from the WAN, or Internet. I know one must open a port (80 is default) and assign passwords and user names on the router. (We are using an AT&T DSL modem to a late model Linksys 802.11g wired/wireless router, to the LAN.) The web server mfg. reccomends a static IP either through the ISP or the use of Dynamic DNS.
My questions are does the DDNS keep track of my LAN's router IP address on the Internet, and if so, how do I access my router from the Internet? If it were a static IP I could simply type in my IP address on the brower's address line, right? Then enter my user name and PW to access Port 80 and the webcam, right? With DDNS do I get an IP address, or a website name (I own two sites alltready, both hosted on Earthlink.) that points to my LAN's router, or both?
As I allready have two websites so could we not set up an A Record to point to a staic IP address either assigned to our location by our ISP, or, via DDNS?
I understand everything downstream of my LAN's router. I do not fully understand how to set up the router to allow me to sign in and view the web cam, nor am I sure how DDNS works, or if we get a static IP, how to access the web cam from the Internet. I think I do, but no joy so far.
Any suggestions, explinations, or links to helpful URLs would be appreciated.
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Please, I understand that privacy issues are involved, including the difference between just viewing a web cam and also being able to listen in on conversations via a web cam. There is a big difference. Has anyone else noticed the lack of web cams with audio pick-up, including the complete revamping of the SuperCircuits catalog? I hold my father's Power of Attorney and in this case it is necessary to protect his health and well-being. Anyone consdiering setting up a web cam, especially with audio, should be very careful I think.
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Thank you all. No outright commercial responses please.
Mike
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