IP Cameras calling home every 3 minutes ?

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xilix
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 12:14 am

IP Cameras calling home every 3 minutes ?

Post by xilix »

Hi -

I currently have 2 of the IP8M-2496E cameras, a IP2M-841B, and the doorbell AD110. All of these save their recordings locally to an SD card. I have never setup cloud storage and I double-checked all of the cameras to make sure cloud storage was off.

All of the above cameras call out to an IP address that appears to be an Amazon AWS hosted server. Each of these cameras, every 3 minutes exactly, initiates a UDP connection to ports 8810, 8811, 8812, 8813, 8814 and 8815. It sends 441 bytes of data (very small - so no video).

I also see an SSL connection sporadically to an AWS hosted server on port 12367 at random times. This is on all cameras, but it appears to be much more prevalent on the doorbell cam, about 3 times per minute.

( The doorbell also sends data to AWS on port 15100 when motion is detected and when the doorbell is pushed. This coincides with the push alerts in the app. Not concerned about this one.)

Does anyone know why the cameras do this ?
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Revo2Maxx
Site Admin
Posts: 5820
Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2019 3:05 pm

Re: IP Cameras calling home every 3 minutes ?

Post by Revo2Maxx »

While I can't say turning off the P2P will make it stop but I am going to guess that your cameras P2P is active and because of this the Camera is reaching out every so often looking for your actions of trying to access the camera over a P2P connection...

So if P2P is turned off what does this mean.. This means that after so long the camera will stop asking the Server to check for someone trying to connect.. From what I hear is after turning off the feature it can take 2 hours for it to stop asking and could be just what it takes to close out prior request...

to turn it off access the camera WebUI at the IP address for the camera, Click on Setup in up right corner, then click on network inside of network it could be in different areas.. I have some cameras that it is under connections, some it is under TCP/IP and some under the Network tab in the drop down that will come up.. In the TCP/IP it would be at the top on that page, Connections it would be also at the top in a tab not your browser but the screen tab for that menu... Then uncheck it to turn it off..

If you turn it off and you want to access your camera from outside your own network you will need to have the Cameras setup on a Port Forwarding Setup and to be Honest P2P in my mind is much more Secure then forwarding your cameras ports to the Internet...
Here to help the best I can.
Be Safe
xilix
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 12:14 am

Re: IP Cameras calling home every 3 minutes ?

Post by xilix »

I'll try turning off P2P. I didn't think it was anything nefarious, as the packet sizes were fairly small. I looked at a few and it appears to have a port number and sequence number.

Agree on the port forwarding - I certainly wouldn't want it out to the open internet. I run a small VPN client on my phone when I need to connect to my home network from afar.

- X
japtaincack
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2022 10:58 am

Re: IP Cameras calling home every 3 minutes ?

Post by japtaincack »

I've had the 4mp poe cams for a couple of years now and p2p is turned off, and has been since the beginning. I have tons of firewall logs to show that it's still sending data somewhere. I wrote firewall rules to block internet access to all amcrest cameras, and everything seems to be working just fine, so I recommend everyone do the same. I need to do some packet inspection, to see what is actually being sent and where, but I've just been lazy about it.
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