Panasonic Network camera BLC131A

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pyromaster114

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I ran into a bit of a problem today... A person I know wants to hook up their Panasonic Network Camera BLC131A camera to their home network, and register it on http://viewnetcam.com to be able to view it while at work.

I took a look at their router, which apparently doesn't support UPnP, so I forwarded port 5000 (the port the camera's going to be using) to the outside, and tried everything again.
Now, normally, you can get to this camera over the network by typing <local_IP>:5000 into your web browser.
There's not much to it.
I forwarded port 5000, so therefore I should have been able to go to <external_IP>:5000 and see the same page.
Apparently that didn't work.

Now, They are using AT&T's most basic "light" DSL package, and they have a weird router, which is a known piece of ****, the Westell Versalink 328W that AT&T supplied them with. This router, I'll tell you, is a piece of crap, but theoretically, to my knowledge should work.

Any ideas?
I got remote desktop to work by using the "IP Passthrough" option, but when I tried to do the same with the camera, it didn't work, I couldn't get to the same page as I can get to over the LAN (The config / view page).
 
I ran into a bit of a problem today... A person I know wants to hook up their Panasonic Network Camera BLC131A camera to their home network, and register it on http://viewnetcam.com to be able to view it while at work.

I took a look at their router, which apparently doesn't support UPnP, so I forwarded port 5000 (the port the camera's going to be using) to the outside, and tried everything again.
You forwarded to "the outside"????? What do you mean? You would forward port 5000 to the local IP address the Camera has on their home network. That's why typing <local_IP>:5000 gets you to the camera in the first place!
Now, normally, you can get to this camera over the network by typing <local_IP>:5000 into your web browser.
There's not much to it.
I'm guessing you also need to make sure you assign the camera a static IP address in the router. Otherwise, how do you know what IP address the camera gets each time connects to the router??


I forwarded port 5000, so therefore I should have been able to go to <external_IP>:5000 and see the same page.
Apparently that didn't work.
How do you know the router's IP address on the WAN side (not the LAN side). Unless your friend pays for static IP are you aware the router IP WAN address could change (in theory) every 4 hours?!!!! From a LAN computer, [U]www.whatismyipaddress.com[/U] and make sure of the WAN IP address you should use. (btw... there is any easy and free solution to a changing WAN IP issue.. but let's first determine that is in fact the problem
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Okay sorry for not being clear, I'll try and explain:
I said I forwarded the port, meaning that I used the port forwarding option on the router, to forward the port (5000) from the WAN to the port (5000) on the LAN at the camera's IP.

The camera does have a static IP address.

I have made sure I am using the IP at the WAN side, not it's internal IP on the LAN. (The external WAN IP is something like 74.209.xxx.xxx or whatever, and the internal IP on the LAN is 192.168.1.254)
Hope that clarifies the situation a bit better.

The IP address does rotate because she doesn't pay for a static WAN IP, but that's not the issue here, at least not yet. The issue is that apparently, port forwarding doesn't work very well on this router.
I tried to forward the port for remote desktop (3389) in the same manner (as I have done on my linksys router in my home...) and that doesn't work right either... so I believe this to be a port forwarding issue.
 
Ahhh... thank you for the additional detail.

1. One thing still not mentioned, what about software firewalls running on the individual computers? Do ports need to be opened there to?? in order to allow the port 3389 traffic inbound and/or outbound. So what machines are involved with testing and what firewall protection does it run?
2. If you use anything OTHER THAN windows firewall you must make sure Windows Firewall is turned off. You don't want both firewalls running.
3. You may find it a heck-of-a lot easier to debug if you use Wireshark - a freeware network monitor. Then you can see exactly what traffic is being sent between your devices and find where the break down is and how well router is workging. Use Wireshark. best and is freeware
 
Ah yes... I forgot to mention the firewalls on the individual computers...
The computer I used for testing everything had nothing but windows firewall, which I turned off at one point to see if that would help... it didn't do anything.

I of course tried several computers, on each configuration of the router, no luck with any of them.
The ONLY way I was able to get anything to get through the router's system was to set a computer on the IP passthrough feature, which I guess is this thing's DMZ, and I was able to, after turning off the firewall completely on the router, access remote desktop over the internet. (Firewall settings on both computers didn't seem to make a difference, just as long as the router firewall was off.)

I did try to activate the IP passthrough feature on the router for the camera, but it didn't work at all like that either. (You'd think if you could use this feature to enable remote desktop over the internet, it would work to connect to the camera's interface, but it doesn't...)
 
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