Automatic Service Discovery of IP Cameras over Wide Area Networks with NAT Traversal

Chien-Min Ou,Wei-De Wu

doi:10.4236/ait.2012.22004

Abstract

A novel framework for remote service discovery and access of IP cameras with Network address Translation (NAT) traversal is presented in this paper. The proposed protocol, termed STDP (Service Trader Discovery Protocol), is a hybrid combination of Zeroconf and SIP (Session Initial Protocol). The Zeroconf is adopted for the discovery and/or publication of local services; whereas, the SIP is used for the delivery of local services to the remote nodes. In addition, both the SIP-ALG (Application Layer Gateway) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)-IGD (Internet Gateway Device) protocols are used for NAT traversal. The proposed framework is well-suited for high mobility applications where the fast deployment and low administration efforts of IP cameras are desired.

Highlights

An IP camera (IP CAM) [1,2,3] is a video camera that can be directly connected to the internet without the need for a separate computer
local area networks (LANs) A consists of a number of laser printers, one IE browser and 2 IP CAMs
The proposed STDP protocol has been found to be effective for IP CAM applications

Summary

Introduction

An IP camera (IP CAM) [1,2,3] is a video camera that can be directly connected to the internet without the need for a separate computer. The protocol is well-suited for the IP CAMs. In the proposed STDP, the SIP is required to be deployed only on a single node, termed trader, in the LAN. A remote access to any IP CAM in the LAN can be accomplished by first retrieving the service information from the trader using the SIP. A remote node can access the web server associated with the target IP CAM based on the retrieved service information. Since the trader in a LAN contains all the service information in the LAN, the exposure of trader is equivalent to the exposure of all nodes in the LAN Both UPnP-IGD and SIP-ALG (Application Layer Gateway) [14] protocols are used for NAT traversal in the STDP.

Preliminaries

Zeroconf

STDP with Nat Traversal

Experimental Results

Conclusion