Per BeeJ:
I have a Panasonic BLC1A camera that I am trying to set up.
Router is a Amped R20000G. Laptop is Win XP Pro latest update.

I think there are several ways to do this but am not sure what exactly
to do. I am trying to follow the setup software provided but keep
failing.

Typically an IP camera has it's own web page which you can use to set it
up.

To get to the page, find out the cam's address on your network (a
utility called "NetScan" is one way....)

Then type that address, followed by port 80 into your browser window.

e.g. if the cam's addr were 192.168.3.200, you would type
http://192.168.3.200:80 into your browser.

That will get you to a rendering of what the camera sees and, probably,
to some setup options.

One problem is going to be making sure it winds up with the same IP addr
every time it's connected. With no intervention on your part, your
router will assign it an address each time it's connected.

What you want to do is tell the router to always assign it a certain
address. You *could* tell the camera to always take a certain address,
but you have to go into the router anyhow (below) if you want to get to
the camera from outside your home.

The task is telling the router to do something called "Port Forwarding"
to port 80 of the camera's address. Track down one of your techie
neighbors or work colleagues. It's not rocket science, but you can
spend hours groping around if you come at it cold.


Once you have the router doing the Port Forwarding thing, you can get to
it from outside your home by typing your home's IP address followed by
the port into a browser. e.g. http://108.16.41.19:80

Type "www.ipchicken.com" into your browser while at home to see your
home's current IP address.

"Current" because it will probably change every time you turn the router
off and then on again.

This leads us to the last step: getting an unchanging IP address.
To do this, you register with any number of freebie services that will
let you pick a name (e.g. JimJones.DynDNS.org) and associate it with
your current IP address. Once you've done that, you can either set
your router or your home PC to keep refreshing that address and you can
get at the camera from afar via http://JimJones.DynDNS.org:80.

Again, find that techie and have him lead you through this.
--
Pete Cresswell