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IP Camera's using up all our Upload broadband !

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remus:
Hi all,

Staff at the community centre where I volunteer have been coplaining about slow internet for a while this year.
they say its getting worse and worse and after our ISP reported we were using a strangely large amount of Upload data. I disconnected all computers and devices from our network and enabled them one by one while monitoring our ISP upload usage summary page in a web browser on my phone.

I've discovered the problem is caused by IP Camera's we have been installing since April this year. We have about 20 of these things at the moment, they are all configured by P2P.

The manufacturer in China "Longse" claim they will use a little data to transmit P2P readiness status to a server for devices to connect to remotely via apps.

But these camera's are consuming over 4GB of upload broadband every day now.

Can I get some advice as to how I can place a computer between the network switch and our modem to capture the data the camera's are transmitting and examine it ?

All comments and suggestions welcome.

Thank you :)

Rich:
Hi remus
Wireshark will let you set triggers and capture on a wide variety of parameters. The problem is getting
a good point to tap the data stream. You'll probably need to place a computer between the network
switch and the modem with 2 network cards to act as a "bridge". Then use Wireshark to listen in on
one of those network cards. You can probably use  iptables.tcz  to bridge the 2 network cards.

NewUser:
We had a similar problem at work when video cameras data was sent to a remote site, instead of being kept locally.  Unfortunately I don't remember the fix, though decreased resolution was a part.

curaga:
Many Chinese cameras are known to send their image stream to Chinese servers, and to let the parent company view & control everything. The bad thing about it is that if you block that in your firewall, the cameras may stop working locally too.

hiro:
The more these IoT devices can do the more important it is to separate them cleanly in their own VLAN or comparable measures and block all outside communication.
If the devices stop working without their command&control servers as curaga warns then they are not worth having in the first place and should be discarded or given away with a big fat warning.

Little side-story to show other practical unintended benefits:
Some years ago I bought an amazon firestick exclusively to use the XBMC fork Kodi, and I was wise enough to block all connections but to my NAS.
Friends did the same, but forgot my recommendation to block all possible, so their OS got upgraded and amazon removed functionality that was required to auto-start Kodi. Firmware downgrades are also not possible any more.
My device wasn't able to update, so I'm fine.

It's not just about China for me. I want to be in control. :)

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