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PaulsonLaw

Cooked a linksys router! Was 3yrs old anyways.. Upgrade?

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What is the best, or better routers for streaming w a DVR?

 

Our was old already & had 12 things running almost all day, then the DVR must have overkilled & in the trash it went....

 

In the mean time I picked up a new linksys 2500 & just got done connecting all the crap to it...

 

D S R - 5 0 0 N Wi re l e s s S er v i ce s R o u te r is what a local network company recommended for it, as I'll be putting a 2nd dvr system at the other gateway router....

 

They also said as I have to forwards ports, I need a "SonicWall", an inline firewall device to protect the DVR's....

 

SO! & thanks for reading this...

1. What router do you point to for this application?

2. Can a worm, malware, virus corrupt your DVR?!?!?!

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Also as to #2.,...

 

If crap can get into an open port to the DVR corrupting it, is it better to have a unique port # instead of the 80 8080 9000 & so on?

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1. What router do you point to for this application?

I like anything I can flash with DD-WRT. Haven't found that the specific hardware makes a huge difference (except for things like WiFi G vs N... and the chipset matters if you want to set up WDS or a mesh network; you need all of them to be the same brand of chipset for WPA to work).

 

2. Can a worm, malware, virus corrupt your DVR?!?!?!

Ummmm... not by itself. If someone is surfing porn sites on a PC-based DVR, then sure... and it won't matter what ports you use or what firewall you have in place.

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Worms, viruses, etc. are not "universal" code and will only run on the system they're written for - someone would have to WRITE a worm for it... being an embedded, realtime OS that's probably highly customized, I doubt one exists... and being stored on a ROM or EEPROM, it wouldn't be possible for an external application like that to change any code anyway (unless, say, the unit supports automatic remote updates and someone hacks the manufacturer's update site... but again, it's the machine going out and requesting the updates anyway, and a firewall won't block that).

 

Even with a Windows-based system, the basic firewall included in all routers, as well as the built-in Windows firewall, should be sufficient to prevent outside intrusion. When you have only one or two ports forwarded to the machine, then only attacks/attempts on that port would even REACH the system. For the attack to accomplish anything, it would have to "affect" whatever is listening on that port. If all there is, is the DVR app looking for connections, the attack can blather away at it all day, and the app won't respond unless it hears the request it's listening for.

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What is the best, or better routers for streaming w a DVR?

 

Our was old already & had 12 things running almost all day, then the DVR must have overkilled & in the trash it went....

 

In the mean time I picked up a new linksys 2500 & just got done connecting all the crap to it...

 

D S R - 5 0 0 N Wi re l e s s S er v i ce s R o u te r is what a local network company recommended for it, as I'll be putting a 2nd dvr system at the other gateway router....

 

They also said as I have to forwards ports, I need a "SonicWall", an inline firewall device to protect the DVR's....

 

SO! & thanks for reading this...

1. What router do you point to for this application?

2. Can a worm, malware, virus corrupt your DVR?!?!?!

 

i have a 5 or 6 year old router, I over work it with streaming video and you name it, and it still works fine.

you likely did not have yours on a voltage regulator and if so that is likely why it got fried.

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So can a worm, virus, wtvr get into a non pc based dvr like a Zmodo?

 

Yes, less likely these usually have an embedded linux running on them. As for changing the port number to something else I can quickly scan all the ports on a network and determine what is up or down. This activity does not have to be happening on the DVR itself there are many worms out there which are able to spread on their own.

 

As for a good router? The best you will ever get is something you build yourself, search Router operating systems, such as untangle, PFSense, m0n0wall, ClearOS and the list goes on. Then you get to pick the network cards your router will use and the hardware specs. I have turned a mini ITX board into a very powerful 1.6GHz 2GB RAM with 2 1xgb ethernet cards.

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Great info Soundy & SectorSecurity, conflicting but good info lol...

 

As for an update, I went to use the old power adapter off the cooked router & whenever a small load was applied, poof....

 

So yes, the power adapter may have caused the crash....

 

I'm glad I had to upgrade, the linksys e2500 has a noted change from the old linksys!

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If you can get a dual band so 2.4 and 5GHz and it can actually broadcast on both channels at the same time you can set it up so your streaming happens on the 5GHz band and your internet activity (browsing and such) happens on the 2.4GHz band, can help reduce the network latency.

 

Just be careful most all routers will do dual band not all will transmit both at the same time, most you have to pick either 2.4 or 5.

 

As for malicous content using a different port, it is quite possible for the traffic to tunnel itself through an open port, we do this sometimes at work to tunnel SSH traffic through an HTTP port to pass through firewalls.

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