Hikvision DS-7616NI-SE/P Firmware Update

[cigar7]

I am about to do a firmware update a Hikvision DS-7616NI-SE/P by going to the NVR by HTTP from a local LAN PC, going into the maintenance menu, upgrade, and specifying a drive on the PC containing the contents of
NVR_(76-SE,V,VP)BL_EN_STD_V3.0.10_141125.zip

Any known issues or concerns?

 

[fenderman]

Is there a specific issue you are having that you hope the firmware upgrade will resolve?

 

[cigar7]

Some of my current concerns are:

1. Through all 3 interfaces into the NVR: directly using the mouse and a TV, by PC using the web interface and by using Ivms-4200 client; for all cameras, I do not see all of the features and functions of a camera. To see, or change all features of a camera, I need to access the camera directly, which means unplugging the camera from the NVR and getting the camera web interface to the PC.

2. When accessing the NVR directly, using the mouse interface, and using a TV via HDMI for display - the "live view" will not display more than 2 cameras simultaneously, the other camera frames just show a black box with "no resource". I can get all cameras into "live view" using the web interface.

3. Camera password management through the NVR is another concern. One can't plug and play any camera unless using the default password. I'm hoping that plug and play, hikvision cameras, will allow password changes. I do realize that going to manual allows password change, but then other features need to also change, and the process becomes more complicated.

 

[DaveP]

Hi cigar7

Re 1. if your nvr lan output is going to a switch / router then connect an extra cable to one of the nvr camera inputs and connect that to the switch / router as well.... this will give lan / web interface access to all your cameras as well as the nvr.

Re 2. pass at the moment, but it may fix it self when 1 & 3 are sorted.

Re 3. plug and play can give strange effects (and its not that great a saving), so just use manual it only takes a few seconds for each camera.

the process becomes more complicated

Only at first, lol... once you get the routine then its plain sailing

 

[alastairstevenson]

Good advice, Dave. There are only a few extra steps using Manual instead of Plug&Play - such as choosing and setting the IP address of the camera and the PoE port to be the same.
And you get to set the camera admin password to your choice and the IP default gateway to the value you need - which on my DS7816N-E2/8P NVR under Plug&Play gets set to the same as the NVR LAN interface.
And documented in threads on this forum is more than one method of gaining full normal LAN access to the cameras on the PoE ports for any other configs you need or other access requirements.
I'm pulling video streams from the PoE connected cameras to my QNAP Surveillance Station as well as the Hikvision NVR, both on the normal LAN.
A couple of sample screenshots:

 

[cigar7]

Hi cigar7

Re 1. if your nvr lan output is going to a switch / router then connect an extra cable to one of the nvr camera inputs and connect that to the switch / router as well.... this will give lan / web interface access to all your cameras as well as the nvr.

Re 2. pass at the moment, but it may fix it self when 1 & 3 are sorted.

Re 3. plug and play can give strange effects (and its not that great a saving), so just use manual it only takes a few seconds for each camera.



Only at first, lol... once you get the routine then its plain sailing

For 1 - I put one cable from the WAN port on the NVR into the switch, one cable from the router to the switch, and one cable from a camera port on the NVR to the switch. Once the second cable from the NVR is attached to the switch, the router freezes - no access to the router. If either cable from NVR is not connected to the switch, the router functions properly. If both cables from the NVR are attached to the switch, the router freezes.

If both cables from the NVR are connected to the switch, along with the cable to the router, the port lights on the switch blink abnormally fast, and so does one of the lights on the router. The router light blinks so fast that it is in a flickering steady on state. If either NVR cable is removed from the switch, then the switch blinks normally, 3 blinks every 2 seconds, same as the router.

Should some parameters be changed on the NVR or router so both cables from the NVR, along with the cable from the router, can be connected simultaneously to the switch?

I also noticed some cameras use IPV4 gateway 192.168.254.1 (the NVR NIC) and some use the router as the gateway 192.168.0.254. Which is the appropriate gateway for all cameras?

 

[DaveP]

Which is the appropriate gateway for all cameras

The address for the cameras gateway is your router address (192.168.0.254)

How many cameras do you have and are they all connected to the NVR and assigned ip addresses in 192.168.0.X range, your nvr should also be given an ip in the same range of 192.168.0.X and none of them should have DHCP enabled as you want the ip addresses to be dealt with by your router.. Once you have the ip addresses sorted out on your cameras and nvr, then you can fix them as static in your router.

Hopefully your switch is unmanaged (cos no set up is required) if its a managed switch ... either dig into it and sort it out, or get a cheap unmanaged one

 

[aster1x]

The address for the cameras gateway is your router address (192.168.0.254)

How many cameras do you have and are they all connected to the NVR and assigned ip addresses in 192.168.0.X range, your nvr should also be given an ip in the same range of 192.168.0.X and none of them should have DHCP enabled as you want the ip addresses to be dealt with by your router.. Once you have the ip addresses on your cameras and nvr, then you can fix them as static in your router.

When the cameras are connected to the NVR internal PoE switch, the camera gateway setting is irrelevant since the NVR DOES NOT route IP requests from the camera to the NVR LAN port. That's why all the motion detection and network related functions of the camera DO NOT function when the camera is connected to the NVR PoE internal switch. The NVR routes IP traffic only when the traffic is inititated from the NVR LAN port and if the Virtual Host feature in the nVR firmware is enabled. Therefore the NVR knows that the internal PoE switch has the IP 192.168.254.1 and the NVR assigns the IPs 192.168.254.2-17 to the cameras connected to the NVR PoE switch.

If the NVR had routing abilities FROM the NVR PoE switch to the NVR LAN port, then all the network related functions of the camera (area, face and line like motion detection alerts) would function. That would be the ideal way of exploiting all the camera firmware functions that are not detectable and functional from the NVR firmware of the low end line 76XX NVRs. The alternative solution to exploit all these camera features is to connect the cameras to the same switch as the NVR LAN port and to have IPs from the same IP subnet as the main router of the LAN. In this case you must handle separately the supply of power to the cameras.

I hope some people who are more knowlegable on the busy box linux based NVR firmware, will be able to add sometime this routing functionality to the NVR.

 

[DaveP]

the camera gateway setting is irrelevant

Except of course when ones doing the loop back trick (when Virtual Host is not an available feature) to enable lan access to all the cameras settings that are not available through the nvr.

 

[aster1x]

Except of course when ones doing the loop back trick (when Virtual Host is not an available feature) to enable lan access to all the cameras settings that are not available through the nvr.

Yes you are correct, thanks for the correction-addition.

 

[cigar7]

I see from post #5 fromalastairstevenson that his camera IP addresses are in the 192.168.254.xx range so they seem to be on the NVR subnet. But post #7 by DaveP recommends that camera gateway should be 192.168.0.254, so the cameras would get addresses in the 192.168.0.xxx range and be on the router subnet.


I tried my configuration with 2 different unmanaged switches.

Then in post #8 from aster1x states "all the motion detection and network related functions of the camera DO NOT function when the camera is connected to the NVR PoE internal switch". However, all motions detection features of all cameras attached to the NVR are fully functional and changeable on the NVR software, and all cameras have an address in the 192.168.254.xxx range. 90% of the camera features are available on the NVR. The camera features, not available on the NVR, referred to in post #3, are things like reverse image, mirroring, etc.

 

[alastairstevenson]

cigar7 - yes, I do have my cameras default gateway set to the PoE ports interface IP address. That's because I'm using a different method from that outlined by DaveP to gain access to the cameras for things like configuration items not available to the NVR interface, such as access by Surveillance Station from my QNAP NAS (as native Hikvision models), and motion detection works OK as does full access to camera admin. Unlike the 'extra cable method', I have enabled traffic routing via the NVR LAN interface to the PoE interface, so I need to have the camera default gateway set like that so the traffic flows.
But - it's best to ignore that, it's not relevant to your situation, and is potentially confusing.

On your problems when connecting the extra cable - this sounds to me like a network loop, where the traffic flows continuously round in a circle as fast as it can. That would kill a router's performance!
If so, I'd speculate that your NVR already has 'ip_routing' enabled in the NVR Linux environment, so traffic can just flow all round.
If you are careful - you could test this at an NVR command line like so:

dvrdvs login: root
Password:

BusyBox v1.16.1 (2014-05-19 09:41:10 CST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
can not change to guest!
[root@dvrdvs /] # cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
1
[root@dvrdvs /] #

If the value=1, then IP routing is active between LAN interface and PoE ports interface. Value=0, it isn't.
If so, this may imply that your NVR has the 'Virtual Host' capability partly active - but perhaps not enabled in the web GUI. I think the tickbox is under Network | Advanced but not sure as I don't have it.
If that's so - and you enable it - you should find the URLs to the cameras in the last column on the right at Camera Management, next on from 'Protocol'.

On motion detection settings available via the NVR web admin - are you saying that you can configure 'line detection' and 'intrusion detection' and 'PIR detection' directly on the NVR?
These are usually some of the missing configurable items when the cameras cannot be directly accessed.

 

[aster1x]

I see from post #5 fromalastairstevenson that his camera IP addresses are in the 192.168.254.xx range so they seem to be on the NVR subnet. But post #7 by DaveP recommends that camera gateway should be 192.168.0.254, so the cameras would get addresses in the 192.168.0.xxx range and be on the router subnet.


I tried my configuration with 2 different unmanaged switches.

Then in post #8 from aster1x states "all the motion detection and network related functions of the camera DO NOT function when the camera is connected to the NVR PoE internal switch". However, all motions detection features of all cameras attached to the NVR are fully functional and changeable on the NVR software, and all cameras have an address in the 192.168.254.xxx range. 90% of the camera features are available on the NVR. The camera features, not available on the NVR, referred to in post #3, are things like reverse image, mirroring, etc.

I apologise if my explanation confused you and I will try to clarify in simpler terms.

When a camera with IP 192.168.254.2 connected to the NVR internal PoE switch detects any motion event, the camera creates an alert message that is "heard" from the internal NVR PoE switch with IP 192.168.254.1 and it is managed from the NVR firmware software. This event message cannot propagate outside the NVR to the rest of the LAN because the NVR does not route IP traffic initiated from the camera to the NVR LAN port. Therefore if the camera is setup to send an email associated with this motion detection, the email cannot propagate outside the NVR, regardless what gateway you have defined in the camera. As DaveP added (correctly) in post 9, if there is patch cable from the NVR internal PoE switch to your LAN switch (where the NVR LAN port is connected and where your Internet router is also connected) and if you define in the camera gateway with the IP of your Internet router IP (say 192.168.0.254), then the email message traffic appears at the Internet router who routes the email alert generated from the camera to the internet. In this case the NVR does not "understand" this IP traffic.

In fact the camera gateway definition is only useful and operational if the camera is connected to routable switch or router and any traffic is routed to the internet if this gateway is the same as the router Internet gateway (in your case 192.168.0.254 if I understand well your LAN topology).

Similarly the network related functions like NTP server and NAS and storage IP traffic ARE NOT routable through the NVR to the rest of the LAN, unless you have used the patch cable from the NVR PoE switch to the LAN switch. The disadvantage of using the patch cable is that you loose one camera connection with PoE functionality and the switch that handles the camera IP traffic is loaded with IP traffic.

Conclusion and summary: All camera network functions operate normally. The question is how the messages and events are communicated between the camera, the NVR and the LAN.
Since the NVR cannot route IP traffic from the internal PoE switch for the cameras to the outside LAN, all IP traffic generated from the cameras' network related functions is only "heard and understood" by the NVR and only by the NVR. The NVR can only route IP traffic between camera and LAN ONLY if the IP traffic is initiated from the LAN side (not from the camera side) and ONLY if the Virtual Host feature is enabled. If the Virtual Host feature is not enabled (or when it did not exist before the NVR firmware version 3.0.8 if I remember well) then the camera is (was) completly inaccessible and isolated.

I hope the above clarifies the network communications between the camera and the NVR. Otherwise ... we are still here for more help and details.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Similarly the network related functions like NTP server and NAS and storage IP traffic ARE NOT routable through the NVR to the rest of the LAN, unless you have used the patch cable from the NVR PoE switch to the LAN switch. The disadvantage of using the patch cable is that you loose one camera connection with PoE functionality and the switch that handles the camera IP traffic is loaded with IP traffic.

Sorry, but I beg to disagree. No extra cable here.
This is a screenshot of my QNAP NAS Surveillance Station, using 3xHikvision cameras connected to the PoE ports of a DS7816N-E2/8P, configured for recording, motion detection etc.
Check out the camera IP addresses and the NAS IP address.

 

[aster1x]

Sorry, but I beg to disagree. No extra cable here.
This is a screenshot of my QNAP NAS Surveillance Station, using 3xHikvision cameras connected to the PoE ports of a DS7816N-E2/8P, configured for recording, motion detection etc.
Check out the camera IP addresses and the NAS IP address.

Dear alastairstevenson now I am confused.

I understand very well that you have a network LAN of the form 192.168.1.XXX, your NAS has IP 192.168.1.201, I do not know the IP of your NVR, your cameras have IPs in the range 192.168.254.11-14.
Now, how on earth the subnets 192.168.1.XXX and 192.168.254.XXX communicate with each other?
Who is doing the routing?
Can your cameras send emails due to motion detection?
Do your cameras get their time from an NTP defined in the camera?
What is the camera gateway (i.e. the PoE switch) IP defined in the NVR interface (not in the camera interface).
Which NVR firmware version do you have?

If YES on the above then, it is obvious that the 7816N-E2/8P (which is a newer NVR than the 76XX series) can route the camera generated traffic from the camera to the NVR LAN port, which is good news for all onwers of the newer NVRs.

I am very eager for your answers.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Hello aster1x - I don't mean to confuse, apologies. But I do admit that I like tinkering around with these things, so what I did on my setup may not be suitable or useful to all. But hey, it works OK for me, as my NVR is on top of some wall cupboards in a utility room on the end of a gigabit cable connection, with 5 cameras directly wired to the PoE ports. I didn't want to add another gigabit switch just to connect the normal LAN to a PoE port.
So - to clarify and answer:

The normal LAN is as you indicate 192.168.1.xxx, default router / gateway = 192.168.1.1
Hikvision NVR model 7816N-E2/8P IP address=192.168.1.210 Firmware = 3.0.8
The NVR PoE network interface = 192.168.254.1, PoE ports can be in the range 192.168.254.2-xxx
Here is a key item - the LAN router has a static route defined - for the 192.168.254.0 255.255.255.0 network, the gateway address = the LAN IP of the NVR, ie 192.168.1.210
This means that any device on the LAN is informed to route traffic for the NVR PoE ports to the NVR at 192.168.1.210
The QNAP NAS being a Linux box gets the route then just connects directly to the NVR LAN address to communicate with the PoE connected cameras.

How does the routing between LAN and PoE ports work? It's done in the NVR Linux kernel, which having 2 Ethernet interfaces, has the facility to do 'ip_forwarding' between the 2 interfaces.
On my NVR, this is disabled by default on bootup. I don't have Virtual Host. I suspect that on NVRs with Virtual Host, it will be enabled by default.
As it probably is on cigar7's NVR, I'd bet there is a network loop when two cables are connected from the NVR.

The method I used for my, admittedly slightly unusual, setup is described here: As I said - not for all ...
http://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread...-cameras-without-virtual-host-or-extra-wiring
I would be surprised if your 76xx /xP could not also do the IP routing between the 2 interfaces. With some care - check out the /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward value, turn it on and off with 1 or 0 respectively, and test the access. But remember you need the static route, manual config on PoE ports and cameras, and a web port other than 80 on the cameras.

I don't use email alerts - would get far too many with outside cameras - but here is a screenshot of a camera on a PoE port accessing the internet for its NTP value:

 

[aster1x]

Hello alastair,
Thank you (once more) for your efforts in troubleshooting. We discussed extensively in the past the problem of NVR routing in your original thread.
I started again to reproduce your suggestions and finally I succeded in forwarding traffig from the camera through the NVR to the LAN router and the Internet (at last).
I summarize the steps and requirements because they are all mandatory, according to your suggestions, for all the other forum members.

1. Setup a static route in the LAN router for the NVR PoE camera switch with IP 192.168.254.0 and mask 255.255.255.0 and gateway the NVR LAN IP 192.168.1.XXX. This is required in order for traffic originating outside the NVR and destined for the cameras to be routed from the LAN router to the NVR LAN IP.

2. Ensure to enable the Virtual host feature (if the firmware supports it) OR enable it according to your suggestions in your post http://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread...-cameras-without-virtual-host-or-extra-wiring . My firmware 3.0.9 had this feature and I had it enabled and I confirm it with your suggestion (# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward) at the telnet session at the camera. This enables the IP forwarding of the camera generated traffic through the NVR internal switch to the outside world (the LAN world).

3. Set the IPv4 Gateway in the camera TCP/IP settings to 192.168.254.1 (this is the IP of the NVR PoE switch) (This is the part I misconfigured last time). This means that all camera originated traffic is forwarded to the NVR switch and not the outside LAN world. Then the NVR internal switch forwards the camera through the NVR as described in step 2.

CAREFULL for those who do not have NVR with integrated PoE switches for the cameras AND/OR they connect their cameras to the same switch as the NVR in the LAN. In this case the camera IPv4 Gateway MUST be the LAN router IP. Otherwise the emails (at least) generated from the motion events will not be routed anywhere.
One thing I do not understand, is the neccessity to change the camera port to something other than 80. Please explain why this is required.

Having carefully configured all above I managed to send emails generated from the camera, through the NVR and to update the clock from the NTP. All was well for sometime today untill it stopped updating the NTP and sending emails. I am not surprised because so far I have learned that the HIK firmware is very temperamental.

I will continue my efforts but at least it has been proven that the NVR 76xx series can succesfully forward camera IP traffic through the NVR and therefore the patch cable from the camera PoE switch to the LAN switch is not neccessary(as eventually you suggested as well).

Thanks again for your suggestions.

 

[aster1x]

To Alastair

How can I confirm that the NVR IP forwarding from the PoE switch with IP 192.168.254.XXX to the NVR LAN IP 192.168.1.YYY is working? (apart from the command (# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward)
I followed all your instructions that I summarized in my previous post successfully and now the damn thing does not work :mad-new:.

 

[alastairstevenson]

Hello aster1x. Some comments and responses.
For those installations where no cameras are connected to PoE ports - there is no need to do anything other than use normal LAN IP settings on the cameras, they will be fully accessible with no extra steps.
If the NVR has the 'Virtual Host' facility - the cameras on the PoE ports will be directly accessible using the links provided in the 'Camera Management' table in the remote web administration pages. No need for any extra steps.

The simplest way to confirm that the PoE network is accessible from the normal LAN is to ping the PoE interface address from a PC on the LAN, for example 'ping 192.168.254.1'.
Remember also that for those NVRs where the internal IP forwarding isn't active by default on bootup - the change made to activate it does not survive a reboot. In my case, I've not seen that as a problem as the NVR hasn't crashed once in the 5 months its been running.
In the 3.x versions of firmware I've seen for the 76xx and 78xx NVRs, we don't have easy access to the permanent initial configuration settings. Without a bit of firmware hacking, but that's another subject ...

 

[aster1x]

Thanks alastair for your reply. I agree with all your saying and suggestions.

Unfortunately my 192.168.254.1 or 2 is not pingable from my lan and therefore the NVR does not forward any camera generated traffic to the LAN. I am still stuck with the same behaviour we discussed in a previous thread. At least since it worked for a while, it is obvious that the NVR has the forwarding ability but for some reason it is not reliable.

I telnet to the NVR and from there the LAN router 192.168.1.1 is pingable, the 192.168.254.1 and 2 are also pingable.
This NVR has driven me crazy.

Do you have any ideas how to troubleshoot through the telnet what is wrong?

Also can you telnet to your camera connected to the NVR? I cannot.