IP Cam DNS Query Overload

[swhetsel]

Good afternoon,

I submit a ticket on this, but wondered if anyone else noticed how talkative their IP Cams are. To me it is absolutely unacceptable how many times they are flooding my network with requests to the following URLS:
(hit counts over past 24hrs next to the URL)

config.amcrestcloud.com 62927
devaccess.easy4ipcloud.com 56346
amcrestview.com 37215

Cameras work great and I love them, but these things phone home more than my next top talker by more than double and its a 2019 Exchange & Web server. Maybe there is a setting I am missing, but I am not using nor am I interested in using their CloudDVR as I have purchased an Amcrest NVR that I use on my LAN. I have gone through every config page and cant figure out how to shut these queries off, I cant be the only one that doesn't want my cameras hitting the DNS server more than every other device (60+) on the network.

Camera model: IP8M-T2499E and all four of them do this.(Notice the 4 bars along the bottom of the nice GUI graph I attached that show they all talk insane amounts in comparison to all my other devices) Each of those color represents a camera or client and something is wrong that the cameras are that talkative.

[jack7]

Maybe this will help.
https://support.amcrest.com/hc/en-us/ar ... ctionality

[swhetsel]

Maybe this will help.
https://support.amcrest.com/hc/en-us/ar ... ctionality

So this is the same article that support sent me to follow, and while I have now disabled P2P according to that article after two hours it should have stopped. The log was showing 24hrs of non-stop hits on those domains. The amount of DNS queries did go down slightly, but not like it should have. Again, I disabled P2P, saved, and have reboot them. I'll let it sit over night and see if it's changed.

You can see it did drop the number of requests slightly disabling P2P without rebooting or waiting two hours.

[swhetsel]

P2P has been disabled on all 4 cameras and on my NVR, saved the config, and reboot all the devices. They have been running for over 8 hours now (according to the linked article that was post by another user as well as sent to me by support) after 2 hours this behavior is supposed to time out.

Even with making the changes and waiting more than 2 hours after a reboot of the cameras I am still being spammed with these requests. I am open to more ideas, but to me this looks like a firmware bug that needs corrected.

Below is a picture that shows the last 24hrs and even though there was a dip for an hour after I disabled P2P and reboot last night around 2300hrs it went right back up and the cameras are still spamming the DNS server. Also posting another screen grab of the last 24hrs work of requests from these things.

Post Edit: Apparently when you reboot the camera, even after saving it will re-enable P2P. I just logged in and P2P was enabled again... I have disabled and saved yet again, I will give it some time to see if the request go down

[swhetsel]

OK, I don't want to celebrate to early here however for the second time I disabled P2P and saved. I did NOT however reboot this time, and I temporarily allowed those domains through DNS. Between those two actions it appears to have stopped the requests. I am curious if it has to talk home at least once to stop the requests, and I also want to know if I reboot the cameras if the P2P will re-enable itself starting this issue all over again. Going to let it sit for a few hours still, and will try to report back.

[swhetsel]

Final follow up.

1. If the camera reboots, you must re-disable P2P. Kinda dumb that you save the setting and then it reverts on power cycle.

2. If I block the URLs from connecting they will hammer the server until I allow them at least once. Once they resolve one time, they stop asking to resolve. Again, on a reboot if I have them blacklist I would have to temporarily allow access to stop the queries.

[jack7]

Your 2499 appears to use the same firmware as the IP8M-2493E at
https://amcrest.com/firmwaredownloads
Regarding reboot causing P2P enable, see https://amcrest.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... ess#p31199
If it persists, you could contact Support about the firmware fix mentioned.

[swhetsel]

Your 2499 appears to use the same firmware as the IP8M-2493E at
https://amcrest.com/firmwaredownloads
Regarding reboot causing P2P enable, see https://amcrest.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... ess#p31199
If it persists, you could contact Support about the firmware fix mentioned.

You have been extremely helpful sir, thanks!

[Revo2Maxx]

I am glad I don't have that software on my NEtwork I would make the numbers there look low lol... Seeing all the cameras and Recorders I have setup for P2P access.. I have not had any issue from my ISP and my Network speed is only 100meg and don't have any lag with any traffic that is multi people playing online games and streaming multi movies from Netflix or amazon.. THen my son also uses Twitch and youtube and will have 4 to 10 steams running at one time with no lag or delays.. Why people so worried about P2P pings?

4 Recorders P2P and over 20 IP cameras and 80% of them are P2P setup...

[swhetsel]

I am glad I don't have that software on my NEtwork I would make the numbers there look low lol... Seeing all the cameras and Recorders I have setup for P2P access.. I have not had any issue from my ISP and my Network speed is only 100meg and don't have any lag with any traffic that is multi people playing online games and streaming multi movies from Netflix or amazon.. THen my son also uses Twitch and youtube and will have 4 to 10 steams running at one time with no lag or delays.. Why people so worried about P2P pings?

4 Recorders P2P and over 20 IP cameras and 80% of them are P2P setup...

I'm not worried about P2P pings at all, the network can handle ICMP packets all day long without issues. Even the DNS queries aren't so many that I am concerned its going to DDoS my server and bring it down. However, what it DOES do is create a difficult time time when looking for trending data on issues because I have to filter out all of the "false" positive issues. It's more an annoyance than anything that just doesn't need to be there. No other cameras on my network (I have 6 non-amcrest cameras) need to talk home a few thousand times a day. Now when I log in and look at my network health I can see that nothing is glaringly broken at least from a DNS perspective. Below is what my network looks like now after 24hrs of the Amcrest Cameras not going DNS wild.