Any tips on how to avoid duplicate IPs on an ip camera install?
If the person manually assigning the addresses to the cameras messes up...
You can get a duplicate address.
Or if a camera gets left on DHCP you can get a duplicate address...
Then that can cause havoc on the network and its hard to tell whats going on.
Its happened a couple times recently...
Any tips for how to keep this organized?
Thanks!
Use DHCP, but use static reservations in the DHCP server.
Static reservations allow you to associate a MAC address with an IP addresss in the DHCP server configuration.
The assigments will never change and are especially useful when resetting factory defaults of a camera since the camera will still get its old IP.
Some DHCP software let you convert a dynamic reservation to a static one. Then you can just plug-in the cameras and convert them without typing any numbers.
related: reservations are also helpful for mobile devices e.g. At home I have a 192. network and at work I have a 172. network. I do not want to set a static address each time I move my laptop from home or the office, or set it to DHCP when joining other networks that I do not administer, but I want the benefit of a specific address for home and a specific address for work. I leave my laptop set to DHCP, and then setting up a reservation at work and at home will allow my laptop be assigned the same IP address every time it joins those networks. The same is done with iPhones.
yes, that's a good idea.
Also, some integrators may have three environments, a home, a work, and various camera-only subnetworks at customer's sites. The last often not having any DHCP server. If you have a common subnet you use for those camera networks, you can have Windows fall back to an address in that range when no DHCP server is found, using the "Alternate Configuration" tab.
I did the same with with my MoCA adapters (owned by the cable company and set to DHCP). While they never leave my network, I don't have access to set a static address on them so a reservation was a good fit to have them maintain the same address.
Simply ping the assigned address before plugging in the camera. If you get a response, obviously it is already in use.
arp -a will show all devices currently in use (by IP address)
That's a good starting point when assigning IPs to new devices to help avoid conflicts.
arp -a only shows the cache of recent IP addresses that your PC has communicated with. It is NOT an exhaustive list of IPs on a given subnet.
note that I mentioned arp -a as 'a good starting point'.
what I should have mentioned is that performing a ping to a broadcast address (i.e. 192.168.1.255) THEN performing arp -a will find all devices currently connected to the network.
Though it should be noted that many devices do not respond to broadcast pings...
as jon said, always Ping the address you want to use.
Good rule of thumb: "ping it, dont wing it"
Is that copyrighted yet? I swear I am going to find a reason to inject that into every technical discussion I have for years to come!
In addition to the advice here, this report on IP scanners may help you as well.
Use a good manufacturers discovery tool, these usually allow you to Resolve Conflicts, Bulk Configure, Snapshot the camera and access the cameras Web management pages. Some tools use various discovery mechanisms meaning they can be used for different manufacturers cameras.
As many installations are stand alone systems, the availability of DHCP services may not be present, so all new cameras are likely to de-fault to the manufacturers preferred IP Address - Here's where the Resolve Conflict tools com in.
Try Illustra Connect from American Dynamics, which supports the above features, other manufacturers available :-)
"Some tools use various discovery mechanisms meaning they can be used for different manufacturers cameras."
Which ones? The only time I've ever seen this is when the actual manufacturer is the same (i.e. OEM)
I agree, most do seem proprietary, but try one using ONVIF discovery for better results with current cameras, the one mentioned is such a tool.
Does this tool show you non-ONVIF compliant devices too? Like older IP cameras, DVR/NVRs, switches, routers, computers, servers, or any other non-ONVIF hosts?
Unfortunately not Jon you may need to rely upon an IP Scanner or proprietary hardware scanner for that list as well you may know from your own experiences. Personally Advanced IP Scanner is a preferred primary tool of choice when identifying what's on the LAN, of course if those devices are programmed to be unresponsive to ICMP then you may struggle to see them, so something like NMAP Security scanner may uncover what your looking for by probing a little deeper.
ONVIF camera support being the name of the game here for a flexible camera tool, which should hit many new cameras fresh out of the box and aid initial set-ups where duplicate addressing is likely.
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