NVR Recording is continuously eating data after firmware upgrade

navi

Hello!

Over Christmas break I updated my NVR (model RLN8-410) to firmware version v2.0.0.4210_1447. We set these cameras up at a remote site (900 miles away from our home) on a T-Mobile prepaid LTE connection with 6GB of data a month. The few previous months went off without a hitch! We only used about 4GB even when we would watch the cameras often and scroll through history. In December we updated the firmware when visiting the remote site and about 2 days later all of our data was gone for the month. This sucked! We had just started our month's data allotment.

I tried through some trial and error (after purchasing some over-priced data for the day) that turning off the "Recording Schedule" for my two cameras (PTZ and Bullet w/ zoom) my data usage returned to normal. If you are wondering how I turned recording off, it was in a screen that looked like this:

Any how, our next month of data is right around the corner and I was hoping to turn recording on so we could actually use the NVR we bought... Any one have any ideas why having the NVR continuously record would use data/require internet? Without being able to record history, the NVR is largely an over-priced PoE switch.

Thanks!

navi

I should also note that I looked at the bandwidth usage and saw that the NVR was uploading all of this data, not downloading. Any ideas what it would be continuously uploading data when set to record?

@Navi, a few things I can think of right away based on the post above. Not sure if they answer any or all your questions here, but I will try. The NVR is a PoE switch as you described, however if properly configured it should also be recording all your camera data which will allow you to go back and preview it with one of their clients or directly on the NVR if you are in the same physical location. I'm not really sure of the issue you are describing above, but hope that one of the below ideas may assist.

If you are having issues with maintaining the length of recordings you desire, you do have the ability to add extra local storage to the NVR by way of an secondary (if you have the 16-port version) internal hard drive and or adding an external eSATA drive to the back of the unit. Doing this can often double or triple the total storage and recording capabilities. Some also reduce the image quality to extend the record time. Not a direct question of yours, but may be helpful. If you do a search on Google, you will find a post awhile back that spoke of the amount of storage a single camera does over a period of time. With my number of cameras I get about 7 days of recording time.

You may also want to just record upon motion events and not all the time if you are looking to save on recording space so you have have more archiving. I have all my external cameras set to only record when motion is detected and not all the time. This has greatly cut down on the data being sent over the local network and I'm sure your cell connection as well. The default behavior is to record 7/24 but in my case why would I want to record when nothing has changed in the frame for hours? You can look under the "Alerting" section and also set each camera to record (in the section you showed) to "Motion" only. Just a suggestion.

I think this one might answer the question you asked about data usage... If you have your cameras and/or NVR setup to use UID and UPnP (Default), the cameras send a stream of data being recorded to cloud servers hosted by Reolink. This allows people the ability to access the cameras remotely and not needing to use a dedicated VPN, etc. into their camera locations. This feature sets up a reverse proxy/tunnel allowing clients remote access. Any data being recorded is also forwarded unless you prevent it on the devices and your internal firewall/router. I would assume this is what is taking up your cell bandwidth along with your remote viewing using the client. I would recommend disabling UID and UPnP, but this may impact your ability to remotely manage the units.

I block any external data from my devices going outbound and connect to my system using a dedicated VPN. I can see the blocked traffic where the NVR is attempting to send the streams to the Internet. If you do a search, you will see the way to disable this on the cameras and NVR, but doing this often will prevent some people from getting to the devices. However, I believe this is what is currently taking up your cell minutes.

Hope this helps, and please provide more details if this did not answer your questions.

navi

Hey Quella!

Your third point sounds about right. I am a little confused though. I definitely do have the UID system set up because we are on a mobile phone connection and we do not get a public IP. It was set up this way prior to updating the firmware and only seemed to used data while I was explicitly connected to the device, where as now it seems to use data 100% of the time.

This point:

Any data being recorded is also forwarded unless you prevent it on the devices and your internal firewall/router.

This didn't seem to happen before. If I left the system idle to record without connecting to it, it would use virtually zero bandwidth while still recording full history for a few weeks into the past.

A side note: I am a few hundred miles away from the cameras. I can remote desktop into the wifi router's internal panel / NVR webpage to configure, but that is about it.

So here is my question for you:

Can I get back to the state I was at before without losing functionality? I want to use the UID system to connect because of the networking restrictions, but I only want to use data when a client is excitability connected.

Thanks again for the post, it was very informative.

@Navi,

Understood your distance and need to limit the amount of data being sent to the cloud but also maintain connectivity using the UID option. I do not think I have an answer for you to solve this issue, it may need to be something you can email support on. Support is often very responsive and they could tell you if this is something that will be addressed in a future release. I only connect via VPN directly (understood this does not work for you), and I block outbound activity from the NVR so I'm unable to know the amount of data attempting to be sent out. I can say that I see quite a large number of attempts for outbound traffic, however I have 16 cameras which could account of the volume.

I have not tried to downgrade the firmware and a few previous posts seem to claim that one is not able too on either the NVR or cameras. I think this is a "feature" added preventing such. Again, I would email support and if you get a reply, please share with the group here! Keep up with the safari shots. Very fun to see how much we all miss evert night.