IP Cameras over CG-NAT?

[nzoomed]

Im trying to find the best way to get a HIKVision camera to work over a 4G router on 2degrees.
Am I better off switching to spark and getting a static IP and simply forward the ports, or is there a simple soultion for using CG-NAT where I can use a third party service to essentially route a domain to an internal device such as the camera?
Main issues with port forwarding is the security and these cameras are well known for being hacked easily, a VPN tunnel could sort that.
Only issue i see if i go down the VPN route is that I need a client to connect to the cameras directly, since I will be having more than one site using this. Looks like some people have a VPS running as the endpoint and then add static routes through that to the outside.
I will be needing to add each cameras address to the HIKVision cloud service.
Seems port forwarding with a static IP will be the most simple way, but will need to add extra layers of security such as IP filtering perhaps.
Any suggestions would be great.

[king1]

I have a static IP for that purpose, my sister who is rural had to get a static ip for her 4g router to achieve the same.  I believe 2Degrees should offer static IPs as well...

I have heard and read that if your camera system has a cloud or P2P configuration option, presumably via a NVR, then these can work over CGNAT with the NVR making the P2P/cloud connection to host eg Hikvision and the host provides the direct connection to the internet

HTH

[king1]

another idea
I have used zerotier before and it works pretty well, not for this purpose though...
https://discuss.zerotier.com/t/is-zeroti...era/9441/2

would need a local network of some kind for zerotier to be installed

[nzoomed]

I had been reading a bit about zerotier, but apparently its not very suitable for cameras because there are data limits or something, need to look into that a bit deeper.
Speaking of static IP addresses, 2Degrees told us they cant do it, but i guess it depends on who you talk to there, because half the staff in the call centres know nothing, might need to drop over to their business hub.
Was also talking to spark and they are not too keen on providing me a static IP, but they can give me a public dynamic IP which will work over DDNS, ive heard however that they do issue them and I know someone who has one through spark currently. Makes me wonder if they dont have enough spare IP addresses to dish out, because they dont seem so keen on the idea.
They were telling me about these peplink routers that have a VPN service that will allow this to be streamlined much easier however, might be something to look at.

[Excalibur]

Not sure if it's of any help but I run 7 Dahua cameras with a Dahua NVR on Skinny fibre. No static IP. Skinny fibre/vdsl/etc used to be behind CGNAT but that was 4 ~ 5 years ago.
I use DMSS app on my Galaxy to view the cameras which works well. NVR has a 2tb HDD which stores 12 days footage from the 7 cams.
The current setup was done 2 years ago and I've forgotten if I had to do forwarding. It was reasonably simple as I recall.

[nzoomed]

Not sure if it's of any help but I run 7 Dahua cameras with a Dahua NVR on Skinny fibre. No static IP. Skinny fibre/vdsl/etc used to be behind CGNAT but that was 4 ~ 5 years ago.
I use DMSS app on my Galaxy to view the cameras which works well. NVR has a 2tb HDD which stores 12 days footage from the 7 cams.
The current setup was done 2 years ago and I've forgotten if I had to do forwarding. It was reasonably simple as I recall.

That app was likely going through the cameras own cloud gateway service.
Reolink have the same thing, I have been using those fine on CGNAT, but notice that at times the footage jumps around while doing replay, apparently that is a common thing over CGNAT, I don't have this issue with any of them connected over fibre and I know the bandwidth was sufficient enough on the 4G connection to handle it.

[Excalibur]

The DMSS service has got faster and more reliable. There's been a number of updates to DMSS and the NVR. This is more than I can say for the earlier cheapy brand NVR I had previous which only lasted 5 months..

Right at this moment, I think I didn't need port forwarding. To verify, I looked at my HG659 under Forwarding, there were no entries.
I recall DMSS being p2p.

Earlier, I used XMEYE which worked OK, but once the Dahua NVR turned up, I switched to DMSS. It was more polished as software.

Maybe install the Hikvision equivalent app.?

I would have researched cloud based video storage but decided on my own HDD as the better option at the time.

OH yeah, at one stage I used Teamviewer to access my PC remotely. Then I could view cameras etc. I think also NGROK was used for something, perhaps tunnelling CGNAT.

Actually my very 1st IP camera was a Hikvision. I had to retire it because it wouldn't play nicely with my Dahua system. Elsewhere I read to use either Hik or Dahua but not mix the two. That seems to be my experience.

Hope this is of some help. Good luck.