It is a bit like poking holes in our armor, but I have been opening a few ports for access to our cameras so I can see them from outside the network without logging in via remote desktop.
Since these are webcams they are built to serve images online. You can allow people to look at the camera without a password (bad idea for this task), with limited access via password (what I prefer for viewing), or with the admin password (for changing settings).
They also allow you to set extra ports for access. This way I can view all the cameras through one address simply by changing the ports. Before doing this I took a bit of time to look over the IANA Registered Ports list (more info) to make sure I wasn’t parking them on ports where they don’t belong.
The DCS-1000w and the DCS-900w have two port options.
The first one allows you access to the control features, the still image jpeg, and the streaming image. The default for this is :80 (duh), but it can listen on a secondary port as well. You can have it listen on both :80 and :8080. With multiple cameras you will want to use something like :8084, :8085, or even :11110
The second one is for the Java video and the default is :8481. This setting does not seem necessary for regular use. The code for the java (do a view source on the camera admin java page) has a place for the port, and as long as it is a port directed to the camera (like the 8084 or similar mentioned above) you are good to go.
The Java video seems to be easier on your browser (I guess Java does all the work), but these cameras have a streaming image (I guess jpeg) that loads more quickly and and can be resized with width=”" and height=”" attributes in the html. Too many of them at once will send you to a crawl though.
(http://username:password@your.domain.com:8080/VIDEO.CGI)
(the username:password@ trick for getting past http authorization does not work in IE6 anymore. This requires Firefox or another browser that can clean the bathwater without losing a baby)
The DCS-3220g has three port options.
The DCS-3220g is a different generation of camera and it proves it by being less useful on come areas. Since it has 2-way audio it actually uses 3 ports: 1 for general access, 1 for video, and one for audio. Unlike the 1000w and 900w you lose port 80 when you add an alternate port. You have to append the new port even when accessing by direct IP.
While you can pull the link for a still image from the other camera admin pages, the 3220g has its still image hidden. I had to access it by telnet and dig through its files to find it’s jpeg.
(http://username:password@your.domain.com:8180/cgi-bin/video.jpg)
As mentioned before, using that trick requires Firefox (or other non-IE browsers), but the 3220g provides video via ActiveX. You need IE to run ActiveX, so I use Firefox with IE Tab. Specifically, I use IE Tab 1.0.6.4 because it works with inline frames and the later versions have not. I hope that feature gets back in. I have set the 3220g camera addresses to default to IE Tab, and any pages that I have had crafted with the ActiveX references are in a directory that is set for IE Tab.
I have not done a lot of playing testing on this camera set through the ports yet so I will need to update in the future.
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