IP address on network cameras change preventing remote access

Question

I have 5 network cameras on my network. I manually added settings in my Airport Extreme router for port forwarding. However the IP addresses change often, preventing remote access. Is there a way to prevent this?

Airport 7.6.3 and Mountain Lion 10.8.2

Answer 1

You need to do two things:

1. First, make sure the cameras are not on DHCP (automatic addressing). This will need to be configured at the camera itself. You would need to assign them manual IP addresses as @gosmond already mentioned.

2. Next, make sure your Internet IP address is static. Very few ISPs provide static IPs for home connections (they do for business users). You can work around this by using a service like dyndns which will give you a domain name that will point to your router even if your ISP changes your Internet IP.

Answer 2

You need to log in to your network cameras (through their web administrative interface, look in the user manual) and set them to use Static IP addresses.

(Currently, they're probably using DHCP, which will tend to assign a new IP address whenever the device reboots or disappears from the network for more than a certain amount of time.)