CCTV via 4G Home Broadband

I have a Hikcision CCTV system which is currently setup via a BT based broadband connection. Due to where I live the fastest service I can get is around 25mb down / 5mb up.

I'm contemplating movng to a 4G based home broadband service - my phone line was recently damaged due to building works and I found myself using 4G as my primary internet access including working from home full time. I have good 4G access here and my speeds are consistently 60mb+ down / 20mb+ up with latency comparable to my landline broadband.

I'm considering moving to an entirely 4G based broadband service however I understand most services (Three would be my provider of choice) are CG-NAT based with either no option for a public IP, or a prohibitive subscription cost. I also work from home regularly and rely on VPN use for that.

Ignoring my work requirements for now, as I'm in the process of changing jobs right now, what are my options regarding the CCTV? Hikvision provide a dDNS type service which resolves the need for a static IP however connecting to the cameras remotely still relies on access to the NVR via a public IP and port forwarding on my router.

I have the Three 4G with their old B311 router and remote-access my Reolink security camera in real-time with no problem. Admittedly only the one at the moment, but intend to add at least one more.

In reply to a post by imroberts:

I'm considering moving to an entirely 4G based broadband service however I understand most services (Three would be my provider of choice) are CG-NAT based with either no option for a public IP, or a prohibitive subscription cost. I also work from home regularly and rely on VPN use for that.

Three have a non CG-NAT option. You change the APN to 3internet instead of three.co.uk and you get a public IP address with no NAT within Three's network.

I've seen suggestions that some other networks give you a public IPV6 address, but not tested that out myself.

Reolink by default use P2P for their connection method outside of the home. The camera runs software that handshakes with the Reolink server. Thus when you connect to your Reolink camera you would usually need an app of some sort as you are passing between the Reolink server, which in turn is connecting to your camera.

Many cameras don't have this ability. Or people like me (on my Reolinks) prefer to have a direct connection to the camera and not through a middle man in china. In this instance you connect directly to the camera using your homes IP address. For this you need to setup port forwarding - which can be done on Three, but isn't common among most 4G networks. With the Reolink using IP address plus port number. The camera itself then displays a menu where you can view live feed, change parameters etc.

I run Blue Iris on a PC and this takes all the CCTV feeds, then my Vera Edge Z wave server has a plugin to Blue Iris and takes the feeds, for some unknown reason the Vera Edge is accessible from outside the network on the internet even through CG-NAT. This allows me to use cheap Chinese cameras, what I do have to do is block the IP's of the camera's from accessing the internet using a router firewall rule or they try to connect to IP's in China and Microsoft cloud servers. Blue Iris cannot get out of the internal network either with CG-NAT in place.

In reply to a post by gary333:

Or people like me (on my Reolinks) prefer to have a direct connection to the camera and not through a middle man in china.

Although P2P is the obvious solution, I have the same reservations. In fact my setup routine for a new camera or after a factory reset is to disable P2P. I'm paranoid after being hacked a couple of years back.

Running Netscan/Zenmap shows that even with everything switched off, my cameras still have several open ports besides those configured for the webgui, rtsp etc. I even found login settings using an IP owned by The South China University of Technology in Guangzhou. This is for purposes of cloud storage I'm told

I only ever access my cameras when at home so apart from disabling P2P I also setup with incorrect LAN gateway details, I don't kid myself that I've got them beat though