Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Olaf Berli
Olaf BerliFlag for Norway

asked on

Remote access problem to camera controller

Customer has remote access to an ACTi ENR-1000 camera controller via port forwarding in their router (ext. port 10010 to local port 80). Has worked well for a long time. When adding a new camera the controller firware was updated to latest version. After this, remote access to contoller is ok, but it seems like there is no connection between controller and the cameras ("Connection Failed" message" if we try to watch live video from cameras. Controller picks ut camera settings fine, however, so there IS some communication.
 Access from PC in local network works fine. Remote acess from phones /Tabs (Android) works fine.

Access to controller must be done from Internet Explorer. On first access ActiveX needs to be installed / activated. Suspect this to be an issue, but accessing other sites with same controller works well.

Hpe someone could help.  Thanks!
Avatar of masnrock
masnrock
Flag of United States of America image

Are you able to check the settings of the cameras individually? You may need to tweak settings involving the codec. However, the ActiveX is irrelevant expect for how the PC accesses the system.
Avatar of Olaf Berli

ASKER

Thanks for your response.
Yes, I'm able to check and change the individual camera settings. Not sure which settings that should / may be changed, however. Strange thing is that when accessing the controller from a PC in the same LAN as the cameras and the controller, everything works well.
Problem shows only when accessing from a remote site - through the customer's router.

-Olaf-
On the surface, it sounds like there are some other ports that need to be forwarded for streaming. Which ports are forwarded now?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of masnrock
masnrock
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Thanks again.

I deactivated ActiveX and restarted my PC. When connecting to the controller I was asked to run the add-on for the camera controller, and did this. Unfortunately with same result as previously.

I've also connected without any problems to a test controller at ACTi. This seems to point in the direction of
  - a port / protocol issue in the customer's router/firewall (but it worked fine when controller was running an earlier firmware version....)
 - something went wrong when upgrading controller firmware (I ran the upgrade once more and problem was still there)

-O-
I will check further later, but a lot of camera systems would have requirements to forward other ports.

Just curious, if you connect to the camera locally, could you go to the command line and run:
netstat -a

That should at least help see how many ports on the system are connected.
I'll see if I'm able to do a netstat -a when I get my hands on the controller.

I've also had a communication with ACTi support. Asked them for an older firmware version. After installing (downgrading) to the previous firmware, it started to work as expected !!

I have no idea why the old firmware works and the new doesn't, but ACTi has promised to investigate. I'll be back with more info...

Thanks again.

Olaf
Thanks for your feedback and suggestions.
Turned out to be a tricky one. After communicating with ACTi without getting any closer I asked for an older version of the controller firmware. (The problem started after a firmware upgrade)
After installing the older version everything works just fine.

-Olaf-