CCTV on a closed home network

[danristheman]

What do I need to have a home network that is NOT connected to the internet? I would like to use my smartphone to see who is at the door. I just don't want it to be connected to the internet. Any Advice?

 

[Magic Static]

What is the purpose of not being connected to the internet? You thinking someone will hack your security cams? All you need is a wireless router not plugged in to the internet. Connect your security DVR to it. Connect a computer temporarily to access the router and set up the LAN and wireless.

 

[Cham]

Just set up a seperate router without a WAN connection. Alternate is to not set up an outside port (port forwarding) for the devices you want to keep internal to your network, and make sure UPnP is off on those devices.

 

[. Raine]

Dan, are you getting DDoS attacks on your network? The Anran firmware in the DVR's we use have a telnet vulnerability issue with Mirai botnet. Cold booting everything on the network clears it out but if there's crap you've downloaded that's bad, it'll come back.

I don't worry about it on mine cause I have things secured pretty good here and haven't had a problem.

 

[harshness]

You'll have to use a wireless router since there's no other way to connect your phone and if you do that, you're phone won't have Internet access while you're at home unless you're willing to jump back and forth between networks (awfully inconvenient if not unbearable depending on the phone OS).

I wonder if you've fully weighed the problems your surely going to have against what arguably has a rather remote chance of happening. Of course any time you put something on Wi-fi, you're kinda dropping your pants anyway.

 

[harshness]

I don't worry about it on mine cause I have things secured pretty good here and haven't had a problem.

That's a dangerous illusion when applied to pretty much any broadcast technology; you never really know who's listening.

 

[. Raine]

That's a dangerous illusion when applied to pretty much any broadcast technology; you never really know who's listening.

Very true, things like that rarely stay static. You are absolutely 100% right. It's not something I'm going to ignore forever myself, I'll either fix thier firmware issues or replace the unit. I definitely wouldn't suggest anyone to ignore security issues, existing problems or not.

 

[MosFET77]

Dan, are you getting DDoS attacks on your network? The Anran firmware in the DVR's we use have a telnet vulnerability issue with Mirai botnet. Cold booting everything on the network clears it out but if there's crap you've downloaded that's bad, it'll come back.

I don't worry about it on mine cause I have things secured pretty good here and haven't had a problem.

Dan, are you getting DDoS attacks on your network? Have you making the script kiddies mad again? lol

 

[EarDemon]

Never did anything with CCTV, but this sounds very simple to me from a networking perspective. I would have them connected to my main network just deny external access using hardware firewall rules.

The situation sounds like my XP situation at work. We still have roughly 5 or 6 Windows XP machines that are used for specific legacy tasks that cannot be upgraded to 7 or higher and don't want them to have access to the internet for security reasons. But these machines need internal network access so batch files that execute in the middle of the night can save the output file on a network share for users to access the next morning. Sound somewhat similar?

While going by MAC address would be better, I took the lazy way. I assigned each one of the XP computers a static IP address in sequential order, then in our security appliance, created an address object with the IP range of the computers I want to deny access to the outside. Then created an access rule to explicitly deny inbound and outbound WAN to LAN access but allow LAN to LAN for that IP range.

It works beautifully! And nothing else and no one else is impacted.....except for me. Occasionally one of the XP computers needs a configuration change for the software we run. Since external access is denied, I can't RDP into it at home via my VPN tunnel between work and home, so I have to remote into my work computer and then remote into the other computer. I suppose that could be fixed with VPN access rules, but the situation is rare.

Or you can get another router, but there's the inconvenience Harshness brought up. Being a networking guy who love to play around with this stuff, I'd do exactly what I did at work with firewall rules.

 

[MosFET77]

Advice - call your cable operator and have your cable modem removed! This gets rid of the internet and saves you 400 a year atleast lol

 

[harshness]

Then created an access rule to explicitly deny inbound and outbound WAN to LAN access but allow LAN to LAN for that IP range.

It would probably be a lot easier to just do away with the gateway address (or set it to a something invalid) on the XP clients. In the event that the router gets changed out, they still won't be able to access the Internet.

 

[EarDemon]

Not a bad idea for a home home environment, but for work, I'd like something more centrally managed. It hasn't happened in a while, but there were a handful of times we needed help with the software running on these computers and the vendors would remote in via WebEx or TeamViewer, so I would just disable the firewall rule for a little while and then re-enabled it when done. When it comes time to replace the SonicWall appliance in a few years, I'll just export the config file from the current unit and import it to the new unit, and everything should be good, for the most part. Hopefully by then a few of the XP machines go away.

Not that it matters, but at work we don't use routers. Our Primary Domain Controller doubles as our DHCP server and all devices are connected to the network via smart switches. The Sonicwall firewall could do DHCP, but my predecessor configured our previous DC for DHCP Server Services, so when I replaced it a few years ago, I did the same.

 

[harshness]

Not that it matters, but at work we don't use routers.

Routers in the home context is anything that acts as an Internet gateway (this includes "gateways" that are routers with modems -- and possibly other functionality including VOIP -- built in). They behave more like a firewall than a network traffic director. DHCP can be wherever you want it or you can run without it. That said, static IP on Wi-fi can be "interesting" for guests and infrequent users.

 

[danristheman]

Well this is what I wanted to do is this. My mom asked me if she could have something on her phone or TV that will send a signal from my CCTV system to her tv or her phone in her room. Would it be more work with a home network or just use a wireless video signal sender?

 

[Magic Static]

Well this is what I wanted to do is this. My mom asked me if she could have something on her phone or TV that will send a signal from my CCTV system to her tv or her phone in her room. Would it be more work with a home network or just use a wireless video signal sender?

Look at it from a different point of view. What viewing software can you get for the phone? What does the software need to function?

 

[harshness]

My mom asked me if she could have something on her phone or TV that will send a signal from my CCTV system to her tv or her phone in her room.

Is there anything required to choose from among a series of cameras or is this "system" just one camera at the door?

Would it be more work with a home network or just use a wireless video signal sender?

With a sender she'll have to switch inputs on her TV and that may lead to troubles getting back to watching TV. If it is a true network of cameras, picking out the appropriate camera may require an app (unless the switch uses motion detection to present cameras with something going on). If you have to push a button or diddle an app to get a particular camera to go full-screen, the transmitter/receiver configuration is probably off the table.

If the CCTV system uses analog video, you may be able to use a distribution amp to split the video between a sender and the CCTV switch. If the camera outputs MPEGs (or motion JPEGs), you can't relay that with a sender.

Accessing the CCTV system via the Internet is probably the way it was designed to be used so getting around that can be problematic.

As you can see, there's a lot of guessing and assumptions if we don't know much about how the CCTV system works.

 

[. Raine]

What kind of phone does she have? Android, Apple, etc. There is some free apps in the Google Play Store that work, TinyCam Free works with your DVR, IIRC, it will only show 1 camera though.

You can also hook the camera directly to the TV with a adapter, if the TV has composite inputs, or use a agile modulator to put it onto a channel on the Tv like I did here.

 

[harshness]

What kind of phone does she have? Android, Apple, etc.

It would probably be easier just to buy a $45 Android tablet. A whole lot less trouble if she happens to be on the phone when the bell rings.

 

[danristheman]

My mom has a amazon fire 7 inch tablet new. Her phone i just got her is Moto G 2 gen android powered. Harshness: I have a analog dvr check below I have zosi security camera at the front door. I have a camera at the back door but not much goes goes on there. I do have a spare old tablet she can use android if she needs one. I can't raun another wire to her room because of the apartment rules this is why I want to go wireless. this why i thought of the home network or video signal sender.





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