Getting a camera system's DVR accessible by remote connections.

[stewie-Y]

Hey guys. I've got a QSEE brand camera system and I've hooked everything up fine. To my dismay I found that the ISP of my dad's shop doesn't allow port forwarding(fail), so I can't forward port 85 to access the DVR from home. They told me that instead of forwarding they could give us a set of static IP's and that would take care of the problem.

I had them activate the static IP's and I got the router assigned to one of them without any problem(I'll call it x.x.x.90 for example), but I'm afraid that I just don't know how to go about getting it set up. I tried going into the DVR settings and manually configuring it as the static IP address x.x.x.91, but when I tried to open http://x.x.x.91:85 or http://x.x.x.91 from an outer network device it wouldn't connect.
I also tried manually configuring within the DVR to the IP 10.0.0.6(a LAN IP) and could then acces the DVR from a computer withing the network by going to http://10.0.0.6:85, but when trying to connect from outside the network to both http://x.x.x.90:85 and http://x.x.x.91:85 they did not connect.

Can someone tell me what I may be doing wrong here?

[DaveLembke]

To my dismay I found that the ISP of my dad's shop doesn't allow port forwarding(fail)

Generally the ISP will block certain ports, but never heard of an ISP blocking port forwarding as for the only way to do this would be if they had admin controls of the router you are using that are blocked out of configuring.

Generally when an ISP has a specific port blocked, you can get around this by using a different port number that is not blocked and then add  the port forwarding in your router to accept communications to be directed at a static IP of a system or device you have that is at that address in which the communications are passed through an alternate port. BUT for this to work you also need to be able to change the port on the system or device that is listening so that it matches up with the alternate port forwarding port number. Also the other device(s) elsewhere will need to know to communicate at this other specific port such as I have used port 8077, 8078, and 8079 before for FTP which my ISP was blocking the commonly used ports for FTP and I was able to get around their FTP roadblock. However, most ISPs also have in fine print under the rules and regulations of your plan that circumventing their content blockers is a violation of the service agreement and they could sever the service based on this violation. However I have yet to hear of ISPs who have been able to track down FTP servers on alternate ports. I still run FTP on alternate ports and they havent shut me down yet and its been going for 6 years with no problems. My FTP is mainly for remote access to data that I store on the FTP server which is a low power consumption laptop that runs 24/7/365 with its display cover closed.

Try using port 8077 instead of port 85 which I know is not blocked by many ISP's and make sure the router had the port forwarding configured for this port for this static IP.

[Linux711]

They told me that instead of forwarding they could give us a set of static IP's and that would take care of the problem

Having a static IP is nice because then you don't have to worry about dynamic DNS (the external IP will stay the same), but that does not eliminate the problem of port forwarding. You will still need to port forward. Like the other poster said, try configuring it with a high port number like 8077 and then forward that. It should work.

There is also a nice tool: http://canyouseeme.org/

[stewie-Y]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try that stuff out when I go down tomorrow and will post what's happened.

And, just so that you know, his ISP is ridiculous. They supply a modem that's completely locked down, no editting of any settings and most ports are blocked(hopefully not 8077 like you said).