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Setup Step 3: Choosing a Name for your Camera on the
Internet
So now you should have been able to have a friend see you on your camera.
With typical residential internet service your router’s IP address can change
from time to time. Looking up the current IP address can be inconvenient, and
buying a static IP address is an unnecessary monthly expense.
www.no-ip.com
and
www.dyndns.com
are the recommended companies for
“Dynamic DNS” service. Also known as DDNS, this is a totally free service that
allows your own name to be assigned to your camera. This name takes the
place of the IP address. Together with software in your camera this also makes
sure the name for your camera is always updated with the correct IP address.
These companies are legitimate. They don’t spam you and there’s no catch,
other than the requirement that you log in at least once a month to keep your
free account active. They also have inexpensive paid annual service.
First you create a free account with one or both of these companies. We’ll
take
www.no-ip.com
as an example. The “create account” function is on the
top right under the Username/Password fields. Do not register a domain or
sign up for any other paid services. You just need the free account.
Once you have an account and once you validated it by responding to their
email, log in and select “Hosts/Redirects” on the top left of the screen, then
“Add Host”. For Hostname, pick anything you like as a name for your camera,
except do not use spaces or punctuation. Use only lower case letters and
numbers. Then click on the down arrow for the second part of the name.
There is a whole selection of free domain names you can pick from, as well as
some that they consider premium names worth paying for. For example, you
could pick
servehttp.com
as we have done for our demo cameras.
Then be sure that only “DNS Host (A)” is selected. Don’t worry about the
current IP address and don’t change anything else. Click on “Create Host” and
you’re done! Please write down your complete hostname as well as the
username and password you used for logging in to No-IP.com as you’ll need it
for the next step.
DynDNS.com is very similar but in their case there is an additional step of
checking out a shopping cart with a zero dollar fee.
Now proceed to the next section to make sure your name is updated correctly.
