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[muddypaws]

I have been having this issue forever.  I have tried different routers, even had all the cameras in one location 10 feet from the router, reboot, new firmware....nothing helps.

ALL the cameras drop out.  Not all at once.  They just randomly drop.  Then they might come back in a minute, maybe not for hours, maybe never until I reboot the camera.  Sometimes that doesn't even work.  I have to re-set up the camera as a new camera.

This is a pain in the ass. 

Any fixes for this?

EDIT.....I was going to attach a picture but I can't seem to do that on this forum. 

[FurryNutz]

Are you inquiring about cameras or the DNR-312?

How many cameras do you have?
What is the Mfr and model of these cameras?

[dougb]

I have the exact same problem. I have seven cameras - 5 DCS-2630L's, and two DCS-2330L's. I have a monitor directly connected to my DNR-312L, and the cameras randomly connect / disconnect. I have a suspicion that this may be related to using the same SSID for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands. But that is a feature of my router. I am using the Netgear Orbi mesh router with one satellite. I was planning on disabling the 5GHz band temporarily just to see if it makes things better, but I haven't determined whether that's possible with my router yet.

[FurryNutz]

Link>Welcome!

• What Hardware version is your DCS? Look at the sticker behind or under the camera.
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the DCSs web page under status.
• What region are you located?

How many satellites are deployed?
What is the distance between the Camera and the main host router or satellite? Test cameras connected to router only.
How many other wireless devices do you have connected to the main host router?

• Any 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz cordless house phones or WiFi APs near by that maybe causing interferences?
• Any other WiFi routers in the area that maybe causing interferences? Link> Use a WiFi Scanner to find out. How many?

I recommend setting a static IP address ON the cameras outside of the main host routers default DHCP IP address pool as a troubleshooting step: 192.168.#.10 and .11  DHCP

Test cameras with uPnP and uPnP Port Forwarding both enabled on ALL cameras: DCS Cloud (L) Series Camera Configuration and Mydlink.com

What is the distance between the router and satellite(s)? 30 feet is recommended in between them to begin with depending upon building materials.

What channels are you using on the Orbi router? Auto? Try setting manual channel 1, 6 or 11 on 2.4Ghz and any unused channel on 5Ghz.
Any Wifi Neighbors near by? If so, how many?
What WPA security modes are you using? Try WPA2 and AES only.

Try disabling the following and see:
MIMO, Daisy Chain, Fast Roaming, IPv6 and Set 20/40Mhz Coexistence to 40Mhz only. Save settings and reboot the router and satellite(s).

If you updated to recent FW v.210, try enabling Daisy Chain. Some have mentioned that this seems to be working in reverse order, enabling means disabled actually. Advanced Tab/Advanced Settings/Wireless Settings

I have the exact same problem. I have seven cameras - 5 DCS-2630L's, and two DCS-2330L's. I have a monitor directly connected to my DNR-312L, and the cameras randomly connect / disconnect. I have a suspicion that this may be related to using the same SSID for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands. But that is a feature of my router. I am using the Netgear Orbi mesh router with one satellite. I was planning on disabling the 5GHz band temporarily just to see if it makes things better, but I haven't determined whether that's possible with my router yet.

[dougb]

I'm in the process of gathering the information you've asked for, but I wanted to go ahead and answer as much as I could now.

Hardware versions, firmware versions, etc., coming in another post. I had gethered all of the info, and started creating a post with it, then lost the post due to battery running out on laptop and issues with my power supply on my MacBook Pro.

I'm in USA, North Texas, DFW metroplex.

I have one satellite deployed. Router is upstairs at back of house, satellite is downstairs at front of house. Most cameras are downstairs, but they are mounted high. So they are almost between floors. The longest distance from any camera to the nearest of the router or satellite is about 30 feet.

I cannot control what the cameras connect to - so I can't test with them connected to router only. There is no way to disable them from connecting to the satellite.

There are approximately 30 devices connecting via WiFi, to both the router and the satellite. About 20 of them connect to the router, 10 to the satellite. Most of the cameras are connecting to the satellite. I think only 2 are connecting to the router.

I was using DHCP with MAC address reservations, but after going back to static IPs on all cameras they are more responsive. I have not seen an improvement in viewing the DNR-312L UI though - they still randomly connect/disconnect, with little to no change. When I say the responsiveness has improved, I'm referring mainly to the web UI. There used to be very long delays loading the first page, and all subsequent pages. Now most pages load much faster, but not as fast as it used to be with my previous router (ASUS RT-AC5300).

You mention testing cameras with UPnP and UPnP Port Forwarding both enabled on ALL cameras. I have UPnP enabled on all cameras, but I do not have UPnP Port Forwarding enabled on any of them, as that would require me to configure the ports. As soon as I check that checkbox, I get three new fields for the port numbers to use for each type of connection. I would need more information on how I should set those - do I simply make up unique port numbers for each type of connection for each camera? I did look at the pages you linked to, but did not find info on how I should set these ports.

Distance between the router and satellite is over 30 feet. Probably closer to 40 feet. As for channels, 2.4GHz is using channel 11, 5GHz is using 36. These are the least interference channels based on other wifi in the neighborhood. There are probably 20 neighboring wifi networks, but none are very strong in comparison to mine. For security I am using WPA2 and AES.

I have tried disabling MIMO and Fast Roaming with no change in behavior. I don't see how Daisy Chain would be related at all - that setting is used with Ethernet backhaul, which I'm not using. It controls whether you can daisy chain from one satellite to another for the backhaul connection. I am at work right now, I don't know how I've set IPv6 or 20/40Mhz Coexistance.

One thing I have noticed that I thought was odd - all of my cameras are adding port forwarding rules via UPnP over and over again. Depending on how long its been since I've restarted the router, there might be 10, 20, or 50+ rules, with multiple rules defined for the same camera for every camera. The Orbi doesn't allow clearing these out, I'm pretty sure that the only way to do that is to restart the router.

[FurryNutz]

Try disabling Port Forwarding on the cameras. Any see if anything differs.

Daisy Chain is used for piggy backing satellites and should be disabled if you use wire connected satellites. There has been a known issue on recent FW for Orbi that Daisy Chain check box seems to be working in reverse and that putting a check mark in Daisy Chain in the GUI, acutally disables the feature rather than enabling it.

[dougb]

UPnP port forwardimg is already disabled on all of the cameras. Something else I've noticed that seems unusual is that all of the cameras are connecting to my 2.4GHz band. I have 5 DCS-2630L's that are dual band capable, but they are not connecting on the 5GHz band. That would seem to make more sense to me, they would get better throughput that way.

I have seen up to 4 cameras connect at once on the DNV-312L UI, and it does seem that my two DCS-2330L cameras are staying connected more of the time but they still drop out now and then.

Note that using the MyDlink Lite app, I can get to most of my cameras, but there is a significant delay before the video comes up. This happens regardless of whether I am remote or on my home WiFi.

[dougb]

Here's all the firmware / agent versions and so on - everything is at the latest to my knowledge:

CH01 Camera: DCS 2630L
Firmware Version 1.05.02
Hardware Version A
Agent Version 2.2.0-b52

CH02 Camera: DCS 2630L
Firmware Version 1.05.02
Hardware Version A
Agent Version 2.2.0-b52

CH03 Camera: DCS 2630L
Firmware Version 1.05.02
Hardware Version A
Agent Version 2.2.0-b52

CH04 Camera: DCS 2630L
Firmware Version 1.05.02
Hardware Version A
Agent Version 2.2.0-b52

CH05 Camera: DCS 2630L
Firmware Version 1.05.02
Hardware Version A
Agent Version 2.2.0-b52

CH06 / CH07: No Cameras on these channels

CH08 Camera: DCS 2330L
Firmware Version   1.14.03
Hardware Version   A
Agent Version   2.1.0-b02

CH09 Camera: DCS 2330L
Firmware Version   1.14.03
Hardware Version   A
Agent Version   2.1.0-b02

I have now enabled UPnP Port Forwarding on all cameras, and used unique external ports for each camera. The goal here is to prevent the build up of UPnP port forwarding rules being created for various random external port numbers.

I have also lowered the video profiles on all DCS-2630L cameras as follows:

Profile 1: 1920x1080, 10 FPS, 256Kbps
Profile 2: 1280x720, 5 FPS, Low quality
Profile 3: 640X352, 10 FPS, 128Kbps

The DCS-2330L cameras have their video profiles configured as follows:

Profile 1: Mode H.264, 1280x720 Frame Size, 1280x720 View Area, maximum frame rate 4, Fixed quality at Standard
Profile 2: Mode H.264, 640x360 Frame Size, 640x360 View Area, maximum frame rate 4, Fixed quality at Standard
Profile 3 is not configurable.

The goal was to try to dramatically reduce the amount of traffic on my WiFi from the cameras.

I have also taken the camera on channel 8, a DCS-2330L, and temporarily used a hard-wired ethernet connection. Connectivity in the DNR-312L UI has been completely fixed by this - that camera stays connected, and updates fairly quickly. This suggests to me that this is a WiFi connectivity problem, as using a hard-wired connection eliminates the connectivity dropping and reconnecting.

I also tried changing a router setting to set the 2.4GHz transmit power control to 75%, in hopes of getting some of the DCS-2630L cameras to connect on the 5GHz band. That did not work - they are all still connecting to 2.4GHz. I am more than willing to put another Orbi Satellite in to get better 5GHz coverage, but one of the cameras is less than 6 feet from the current satellite, and it is connecting to the 2.4GHz band. Is there some sort of built-in preference for 2.4GHz? If so, it would be nice if that were configurable, so the camera could be told to prefer 5GHz over 2.4GHz.

[dougb]

I just realized I left out the most important version information - the DNR-312L's info!

Agent Version 2.2.0-b39n
Firmware Version v1.07.10
Firmware Date Jul 26 2018
Current NVR Device Pack v1.12.05
Device Pack Date Jul 26 2018

[dougb]

Huge breakthrough tonight - I came across information on how to get the Netgear Orbi to use different SSID's for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, and after applying those changes, and reconfiguring the cameras to connect to the 5GHz band, they have stopped dropping their connections sporadically. So it would appear that the problem was related to both bands using the same SSID - the cameras were getting confused somehow, and were perhaps cycling between the two bands. Not real sure. But by getting the bands on separate SSID's, things are working now. I have one camera that isn't connected right now, but I think that's a fluke. I need to do a reset on it and configure it again. Can't find a paperclip to do that (I know, ridiculous). Will work on that tomorrow.

For those interested, and who feel comfortable leveraging semi-documented functionality of the Netgear Orbi router, and are technically savvy, here's the link for how to get the bands on different SSID's:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/How-to-set-a-separate-SSID-for-the-5-GHz-network-on-your-Orbi/td-p/1396594

[dougb]

OK, breakthrough wasn't quite as huge - the cameras do drop out from time to time, but now it's sort of the reverse of before - most of the time all cameras are connected, but every now and then one will drop out for like 5-10 seconds or so. I will continue investigating with different video profiles. I had bumped things up a fair amount, now I've come back some from that, but still more traffic than the minimums I had configured before.

[FurryNutz]

You shouldn't need to separate SSIDs on the Orbi. My cameras work well on mine. 

[dougb]

So, it's been a while since I've provided an update. I ran for quite a while with split SSID's on my Orbi system, and the cameras worked better. However, I started having other problems with internet access from other devices. Apple TV's started having slower (and wildly varying) throughput, buffering pauses happened now and then, and so on. Eventually another Orbi user pointed out that they had found a test that looks for performance issues related to very small TCP requests:

http://www.dslreports.com/tools/puma6

While this test is intended to identify problems with Intel Puma chipsets in routers, it's still a good test for identifying jitter and latency of a connection. Based on this, I have gone back to a single SSID for both my 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. My other devices now have much better connectivity, but my cameras are now back to having connectivity issues similar to when I started.

One key difference is that I have replaced my two non-DCS-2630L cameras with DCS-2630L cameras. So all 7 cameras are the same now.

I have decided that camera connectivity, while important, is less important than smooth connections for streaming to my 5 apple TVs, everyone's mobile devices, and so on. I would think that eventually something will turn up to address these issues. Perhaps D-Link might start testing with some of these Mesh WiFi systems?

[FurryNutz]

That test tool is for cable modems and gateway cable modems only and would not be recommended to use for testing wifi or external routers. If you want to check what wired and wireless is really doing, try using pingplotter.com. This would offer more accurate information about what your trying to test.

I have 3 different DCS cameras and they all work with an Orbi system. Tested two different Orbi systems.
D-Link would be testing there own MESH systems. COVR is D-Link's mesh systems.

[dougb]

I tried PingPlotter, and I'm not quite sure what I'm doing with it. I tried it with a few different sites, www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, my work's web site, and all of them were in the yellow a lot, and sometimes in the red.

Where can I find out what this is showing me, and what needs to be done to address it? Also, why do almost all of my DCS-2630L cameras show as disconnected from my NVR-312L? I also tried iSpy, same results. It just seems that the DCS-2630L is very confused by 2.4GHz and 5GHz both being accessible from the same SSID.