App Basically Doesn't Work

[Brendan]

I think I got it figured out. I think the forwarding table in my router became corrupt at some point.
The previous port forwarding was as follows:

Forward port 37777-37778 both TCP and UDP to the IP of my router. I changed it to port 37777 TCP only and it works fine. I put it back to port 37777-37778 TCP and UDP and it still works. I've been streaming 5 minutes of live video with no dropouts.

Only thing I can guess is that the port forwarding table got corrupted over time, most likely during a firmware update.

Thanks for all the help.

[Brendan]

And just when I thought I had it fixed, it's back. UGH!

[Brendan]

Sorry for all the posts but I want to document my progress so if someone else if having a problem, they can see the steps taken.

I might have made some progress. I've been digging around my router looking for a setting somewhere that might be causing this. When I looked in the UPNP log of the router I can see the private IP of my Amcrest DCR making UPNP requests on the following ports: 37777 TCP, 37778 UDP, 554 TCP and UDP, 1500 TCP, 161 UDP.

I forwarded those ports to my DVR private IP and it seems to be working.

[Revo2Maxx]

Good to hear it is work now.. It is very odd that you were having issues even over P2P I have setup a New Old Stock camera for the first time. Set it up as P2P and was rocking off network.. Just took it to the Cabin and even with the new location it is working without forwarding of any ports

I am not sure how the 1500 TCP is needed because it is something to do with IBM by standard from what I remember in my time of Networking... 161 I can understand as it is SNMP and the others are Amcrest or main company protocol for forwarding... 1500 has me stumped though

[Brendan]

Come to think of it, 1500 was me. I don't have access to my DVR now, but I believe I changed the HTTP port from 80 to 1500 in the network config.

Anyway, I shut those ports back down because I'm not a fan of having all of those open, and, I was noticing all the hits to those ports from foreign IPs in my router logs.
I really don't know what the problem truly is, but I know it's 100% my router.

[amcrest168]

hi @Brendan, you may have to do a factory reset on your router. if you are using dd-wrt or openwrt, you may need to erase nvram and start configuration from scratch.

[Brendan]

I think you're right. I'm trying to avoid it but too many odd things are happening that don't make any sense.

[Brendan]

So I reset my router, same results. I think the problem comes back to NAT Loopback. My router apparently either quit supporting it, or it got botched in a firmware update. Within my own LAN, if I connect to the DVR using the DDNS name, I have major connection issues. The connection drops after a few seconds, then pick back up, then drop, rinse and repeat.

If I shut off wifi on my phone and connect to the DVR from the internet; I get 100% connection stability.
Connect to DVR using local IP, 100% stability on my LAN.
Connect to DVR on my LAN using DDNS name, unstable.

Looks like I need to yell at the engineers at Netgear. In the mean time, I set up two different connections in the app. One to use on my LAN, one to use away.

[amcrest168]

which netgear router do you have? my impression with netgear routers has been generally good. i know netgear genie readyshare ftp doesn't play well with amcrest cameras but it's not an issue if the router can accept opensource firmware.

[Brendan]

It's the R8000 AC 3200.
I spent hours on this and I think I got it beat.

I factory reset the router, twice. Still had the same problem.

I tried to load a 3rd party firmware, which won't load.

I downgraded the firmware to a previous version and it worked for about half hour, which is more success than I've had since this started. After those 30 minutes I decided to upgrade back to the firmware I had, and it's been working for about 6 hours now.

So, I think I might have this beat. Fingers crossed.