What is remote access?

When you are connecting to your cameras locally you are using an address like 192.168.1.102 or 10.45.2.3. These addresses will only work while you are on the same network as the cameras and can't be directly communicated with when you leave, such as from your phone when you are out and about. To get it to work when you are out and about you need to use the external address of your router. These addresses are usually a complicated address like 127.104.19.54 which is hard to remember and might change regularly if you haven't specifically arranged a static IP address for your internet service.


Enter dynamic DNS

To get around this problem you can configure your router to keep an external service up to date with it's current external address which you can access anytime using a hostname, just like you use when going to google.com! There are several providers from free to paid, you will need to select an appropriate provider for your modem. If you aren't sure what providers your modem supports either check the manual or look for the DDNS or Dynamic DNS menu where it is usually displayed as a drop down menu. Below are a few providers we have used in the past that work well.


Multiple cameras, one router

Once you have configured your router to connect to one of the DDNS providers, you will need to configure a list of ports that allow you to connect to each individual device from outside your network. We suggest starting with high ports such as 9000+ when configuring the system to prevent conflicting with registered services.

If you don't know how to configure port forwarding in your router you can use portforward.com as a guide. They provide step-by-step directions for almost every router on the market. If you don't know the login details for your router, you can use their router password lists to get the default credentials.

Port forwarding vs. port translation

There are two types of rules that can be created for linking an external interface (your router) to an internal interface (your camera). The preferable option is port address translation (PAT) which allows you to have a remote port such as 9001 redirect to an internal port of 443 (why 443? Check out this article on connection security). This means you don't have to change configuration on your cameras at all.

If your router doesn't support PAT, and unfortunately many consumer grade routers do not, you will need to use port forwarding which will forward a request on port 9001 on the router to port 9001 on the camera. This means your camera will need to be configured to listen on this interface. This process will vary on different camera models.

Configure QCamPro

OPTION 1 (Router must support internal DNS):

  1. Configure your router to use one of the DDNS options.
  2. Once that is configured, change the QCamPro connection to use the new hostname (e.g., my cameras.dyndns.org) and the port number that you have configured for external access (e.g., 9000 for the first camera, port 9001 for the second, etc.).
  3. Save and check your connection. You should be able to see the cameras on either a local or remote connection. Easiest way to test is to turn WiFi on and off and check your connection continues to work.


OPTION 2 (works for all routers):

  1. Configure your router to use one of the DDNS options.
  2. Create two entries for your camera in QCamPro - one using the internal IP address and one using the external details. It can be helpful to create two groups - one for internal connections and one for remote connections - to make finding the right connection simple.