Networking is essential in security systems from access control to security cameras. There are many types of systems out there designed for security. To operate normally most security systems don’t need the Internet, but to utilize all the bells and whistles in conjunction you will need to be connected to the web. There are many options for networking devices out on the market. Chances are you already have your own equipment. If you have internet service you have a router or modem. In most cases when you add a security system you want to have it setup on its own network. To create your own network that will require another router. We suggest the Air Router HP from SecurityCameraKing.com
A new router introduced to your local network will need to be setup properly to allow for connectivity and be able to implement security or restrict access to the system and subnet. Our TP-Airrouter-HP is a great device to handle the job. It has a huge amount of integrated features for a small price. If you purchased a comparable router from AT&T you would be completely restricted and be missing standard routing features. When it comes to the networking there is much more than just getting “online”.
This router comes with a default IP of 192.168.1.20. That IP may or may not work with your current network subnet. Most people or home users likely you will be OK for the initial part of accessing the router. Routers are designed to operate within different separate subnets of each other. This first issue you will run into is that this router is handing out the same subnet as the current router of 192.168.1.1-.254 with a default gateway of 192.168.1.1. This is not going to work as the routers will not know which route to use to transmit data packets to devices on the given network. Devices may stay connected but become sluggish or lose connectivity all together. There are a few ways to go about configuring the router for connectivity.
To begin you need a computer connected directly to the AIR ROUTER-HP. Then you will open a browser and enter the routers default IP 192.168.1.20 into the browsers address bar and hit enter. You will arrive at the router’s login page. Ubnt/ubnt is the user name and password to login. Once you log into the router you will see 6 tabs at the top of the page for different groups of features. The features we initially need access to be located in the network tab. As we need this router to work with another router on the network there are a 3 ways to configure the router. The network role is what you are looking for and the network mode is what needs to be changed. The modes of the Router are: Router, SOHO Router, and Bridge.
Putting the device in bridge mode is the easiest option to configure connectivity. Save and apply then connect to your other router and you will have network access. Bridge mode bridges the two routers together so they are in the same virtual network. In other words your main router is still handing out IP addresses to all devices connected to main router and secondary router. The next option that can save time is on the same page it is called Configuration MODE. Your options are simple and advanced. If you are going to bridge the router I would suggest leaving it in simple mode. Most of the options in advanced mode you probably won’t use. From here all you set is the secondary router’s IP address to be static or dynamic. For port forwarding it really does not matter as in bridge mode the forwarding is only done on main router. If you decide to go into advanced mode this can change, but not necessarily. The features you gain access to in advanced mode are: Interfaces (physical ports on router) IP aliases (associating multiple IP to one interface), Vlan (restrict access to devices), Firewall (stop traffic coming in), Static routes (manual routing), Traffic shaping (rate limiting).
SOHO Router and Router mode are just about the same. SOHO means small office/ home office. The main difference is in the Network address translation feature. In Router mode all the NAT protocols are enabled. In SHO Router mode the features can be disabled or enabled as needed. In both SOHO router and router modes the Wide Area Network (WAN) and Local Area Network (LAN) have to be manually configured. In the WAN feature you can set the router to DHCP or static meaning you can assign a static IP or let the primary router assign it an IP. I can tell you for port forwarding to not stop working after power loss you will need to assign the router a static IP address. Since every time a router loses power when in DHCP mode it will get a new IP address between from primary router. This makes old port forwarding rules incorrect, so you will lose remote access. The LAN settings are very important. You cannot have the same subnets assigned to two routers connected to each other. In LAN you will want to assign an IP address in a different subnet from primary router such as 192.168.2.1. Then you need to enable DHCP server so the router can automatically assign devices a IP address in that subnet. Next you set the range. Typically the range would be 192.168.2.2 to 192.168.2.254. You can make any variation between the last octets 2-254. If you only want 5 devices connecting to that network you can program router to only be able to hand out 5 addresses, so the range would be 192.168.2.2 to 192.168.2.7. This will prevent people from randomly connecting devices to your network. You can still statically assign IP address to device you want to connect to this network.
As you go through this router you can see there are a lot more customizable features to use. Always feel free to call in for further options for configuration.
