How Do I Set Up Port Forwarding For My IP Camera Using The ...

Overview:

While most games, applications and devices that require internet access will work perfectly with the default settings of your NETGEAR router, some may require extra configuration of the router to work correctly. This usually involves allowing incoming traffic from the internet on particular “ TCP port numbers” that are specific to each application. This is called "Port Forwarding", "Opening a Port", "Opening a firewall pinhole", or "Creating an inbound firewall rule". They all mean the same thing.

In the example below, an IP camera is connected to the network on the secure (LAN) side of the router, and Port Forwarding is configured so that the camera be accessed by a smartphone connected to the Internet at a different location. The same principle could be applied to make other devices, such as an FTP server or web server, accessible from the Internet.

Symptoms:

• wants to setup an IP camera on the NETGEAR router

Example Configuration

Hardware used :

NETGEAR DGND4000 genie router connected to DSL Internet connection. These instructions apply to most NETGEAR routers or gateways with the genie user interface, although the screens and menus might vary slightly between models and firmware versions.

Desktop Computer connected to one of the LAN ports of the DGND4000.

Smartphone (HTC Butterfly) connected via wireless to the DGND4000, configured to act as an IP camera.

Another Smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S3) with Data (3G) network connection.

Process:

1. Log on to the router. From a browser on the desktop computer, access the NETGEAR genie Web interface (http://routerlogin.com). Default login details are userid = "admin" and password = "password" :

   

2. Find the IP address of the IP camera (if you already know it, skip to step 3) :
   1. Click on the BASIC tab and click on Attached Devices :

      

   2. From the list of attached devices, you can identify the camera's "IP address" (1) from their respective "Device Name" (2) or "MAC Address" (3). It is recommended to use the MAC Address identity, as it does not change.

      The MAC Address of most devices is printed on an attached label. In the case of our smartphone IP camera, it was available in the network settings screen. In this example, the Smart Phone MAC Address is "E8:99:C4:AA:55:B5" :

      

   3. From the Attached Devices list, looking at the MAC Address "E8:99:C4:AA:55:B5", the IP Address of the IP Camera is 192.168.0.24.
3. Add a custom port for the IP Camera . This is not required if the camera uses a well-known port, such as port 80 (http) or port 443 (https). If that is the case, you can skip to step 4.
   1. In the ADVANCED tab, click on Security, then on Firewall Rules , then on Add Custom Service :

      

   2. Enter a name of your choice for this port, the protocol (TCP or UDP) and the port number for the IP Camera. You will have to find this information from the camera's documentation, it varies from product to product and NETGEAR has no way of knowing this information. If a range of ports are required, enter the start and end ports. If only a single port is required, enter it's number in both the Start Port and End Port boxes. In this example we use the single TCP port 5550 as shown below :

      

   3. Click Apply. The custom port will appear in the Service Table list :

      

4. Create a Port Forwarding Rule :
   1. Click on the work here under "Inbound Services" as shown below :

      

   2. This will take you to the Port Forwarding/Port Triggering page. Click Add :

      

   3. Select the custom service that you created in step 3, or the correct well-known port, from the drop-down list. Enter that IP address of the IP camera that you found in step 1. Click on Apply .

      

   4. The new rule will appear in the Port Forwarding list :

      

5. Now the last part is to prove that the port is open by accessing or viewing the IP Camera over the internet. In this example, we use another smart phone, connect to the internet via 3G, to view the IP Camera. To access the IP Camera, we open the smart phone browser and enter the routers WAN IP address, and the port number, separated by a colon ":"

   Example : 123.456.789.101:5550

   Note 1 : If you do not know your WAN IP address, go to this website from the desktop PC on the LAN side of the router : http://www.whatismyip.com

   Note 2 : Unless you have an arrangement with your ISP to have a fixed (static) WAN IP address, it may change without warning.

   Note 3 : Using online port scanners like http://www.canyouseeme.org/ or http://www.whatsmyip.org/port-scanner/ to verify opened ports are NOT always accurate, partly because NETGEAR routers have an anti-port-scanning security feature enabled by default.

   In our example setup, this is what we saw on the 3G smartphone :

   

Last Updated:07/07/2025 | Article ID: 23416 Was this article helpful? Yes No