Hikvision NVR dropping Cameras

[kc0r8y]

Hi,

I have a 16 camera Hikvision NVR. I've been running 9 cameras with no issues for like a year. All of a sudden one of my cameras show no link, when I go into the camera settings in the NVR and delete the camera, and hit refresh the camera then shows up and works fine for a few days, then drops again.

I then added a new camera (now I have 10). I put the new camera right where the old camera that was giving me issues was. I swapped the PoE injectors as well. Now I have a different camera on my system doing the exact same thing. 9 cameras work fine, but 1 keeps dropping. The one that keeps dropping is a total different camera then before. I tried changing the IP and same issue.

I don't think messing with any of the settings or firmware will help as the system ran fine for a year+ the way it was.

Anyone have any ideas or leads as to what it could be.

Thanks Ken

 

[alastairstevenson]

Anyone have any ideas or leads as to what it could be.

If you have exposed the cameras to the internet - 'port forwarding' - and they are not on a security-fixed version of the firmware, then there is a lot of mischievous / malicious hacking going on by exploiting the 'Hikvision backdoor', exploit details of which were recently made public.
Plenty of similar experiences mentioned on the forum.

 

[kc0r8y]

If you have exposed the cameras to the internet - 'port forwarding' - and they are not on a security-fixed version of the firmware, then there is a lot of mischievous / malicious hacking going on by exploiting the 'Hikvision backdoor', exploit details of which were recently made public.
Plenty of similar experiences mentioned on the forum.

I don't have port forwarding on

 

[alastairstevenson]

I don't have port forwarding on

Does your router have UPnP enabled?
Just as a check, you can confirm that all inbound access is blocked with ShieldsUp!, checking all ports : GRC | ShieldsUP! — Internet Vulnerability Profiling  

 

[kc0r8y]

Does your router have UPnP enabled?
Just as a check, you can confirm that all inbound access is blocked with ShieldsUp!, checking all ports : GRC | ShieldsUP! — Internet Vulnerability Profiling

i'll check when I get home. Thanks for the reply.

 

[kc0r8y]

Does your router have UPnP enabled?
Just as a check, you can confirm that all inbound access is blocked with ShieldsUp!, checking all ports : GRC | ShieldsUP! — Internet Vulnerability Profiling

Should uPnP be enabled?

 

[alastairstevenson]

Not if you don't want devices on your LAN opening ports from the internet that you know nothing about.

 

[alastairstevenson]

i'll check when I get home.

Did ShieldsUp! give a surprising result?

 

[kc0r8y]

Did ShieldsUp! give a surprising result?

yes, I turned uPnP off, bumped up security on my router and the camera is still dropping. I don't know what to do...

 

[alastairstevenson]

yes, I turned uPnP off, bumped up security on my router

Well, that's good, though it seems to be unrelated.
There has been a lot of malicious activity exploiting the Hikvision backdoor.

I then added a new camera (now I have 10). I put the new camera right where the old camera that was giving me issues was. I swapped the PoE injectors as well.9 cameras work fine, but 1 keeps dropping. The one that keeps dropping is a total different camera then before. I tried changing the IP and same issue.

So - unless you've already tried a swap, is the remaining common factor the cable?
Was it pre-made or home made?

Now I have a different camera on my system doing the exact same thing.

This might be indicative of a cabling problem.
How practical would it be to use a temporary replacement to see if that affects the problem?

What version of firmware is in the problem camera?
If it's old enough to allow telnet/SSH access, you could check out network error counts with the ifconfig command.

 

[kc0r8y]

Well, that's good, though it seems to be unrelated.
There has been a lot of malicious activity exploiting the Hikvision backdoor.



So - unless you've already tried a swap, is the remaining common factor the cable?
Was it pre-made or home made?

This might be indicative of a cabling problem.
How practical would it be to use a temporary replacement to see if that affects the problem?

What version of firmware is in the problem camera?
If it's old enough to allow telnet/SSH access, you could check out network error counts with the ifconfig command.

The thing that gets me is it worked fine for over a year...

 

[inforlonghaul]

This may be a redundant question, but when these cameras drop from the NVR, is the camera still directly accessible via its IP? Just the NVR has for some reason lost connection?

It sounds to me somewhere along the lines to be network related. Are your camera bit rates reasonable and not overloading the NVR? Any settings changes or new devices added to the network that may be pushing a lot of bandwidth?

Even though it's a separate issue, the reason I'm asking this is because we had an issue with our NVR at work suffering Abnormal Shutdowns, and it was determined to be the result of the Network, and also had a different NVR constantly losing connections to cameras because I had the NVR's NIC set to 100M Full-Dup, instead of Auto.

 

[kc0r8y]

This may be a redundant question, but when these cameras drop from the NVR, is the camera still directly accessible via its IP? Just the NVR has for some reason lost connection?

It sounds to me somewhere along the lines to be network related. Are your camera bit rates reasonable and not overloading the NVR? Any settings changes or new devices added to the network that may be pushing a lot of bandwidth?

Even though it's a separate issue, the reason I'm asking this is because we had an issue with our NVR at work suffering Abnormal Shutdowns, and it was determined to be the result of the Network, and also had a different NVR constantly losing connections to cameras because I had the NVR's NIC set to 100M Full-Dup, instead of Auto.

Good thoughts! I did a firmware upgrade last night on the NVR, going to see if the problem is still there.