DTT Training

What is DTT? Taken from the website, DTT states: "DTT is a full-service provider of surveillance systems
(DVR's) and loss prevention solutions for the hospitality (Fast food chains) and retail industries. Our suite of
Managed Services offers simplicity & reliability, creating a virtual management presence at all locations at one
time.

What does Technical Support do? The Technical Support team at DTT consists of 3 tiers. Team 1 is the
front line of customer support, answering all incoming calls from customers and either assisting them with their
problems or getting them to the proper department.
Common issues that will be called in are: Remote access issues with their DVR system, hardware issues
(DVR, Cameras, POS systems), Video burning to CD's, and password creation/reset.

What technical skills do I need to know? You will utilize the following skills/protocols at DTT and it will
help to have a general understanding of what they are and what they do:

TCP/IP
DNS
Port Forwarding
NAT
Ping
TRACERT
NSLOOKUP
Windows XP/7/8 knowledge (network properties, add/remove programs, device manager)

Below I will briefly discuss each skill and show how to use it

TCI/IP
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is the basic communication language or protocol of
the Internet. It can also be used as a communications protocol in a private network. All devices connected to a
network are given an IP address (Phone, Laptop, Desktop, Smart TV, Xbox, PS4). There are two types of IP
addresses you need to understand, Public IP's, and Private IP's.

Public IP's are assigned to any device connected to the internet (Cable/DSL Modem, 3G/4G Phone, Web
Server). Public IP's are managed by the Internet Service Provider and must be assigned to you by them. The
internet works by devices communicating via IP address and routers.
Private IP's are IP's that cannot access the internet. Whenever you are connected to a home router (Netgear,
Linksys, D-Link) the router is given a public IP from the modem, and the router gives your computer, game
consoles, and phone(if connected to WiFi) a private IP address. This is done by a process called NAT, and is
used to save public IP address space and protect computers from the dangers of the internet.
Devices on the same Private network can communicate with each other without the need of a router. So if
your laptop and desktop computer connect to the same router, you can communicate directly with each other
without utilizing the internet.
Here is a table showing what private IP's look like. This is a range, so anything inbetween the first IP in a block
and Last IP in the block is eligible.

Here is an example of computers in a private network and how the big picture looks like:

As you can see, the computers in the University Network are on a 192.168.0.X private network. The router
that they connect to has a PUBLIC IP of 212.36.199.74. This router connects to a firewall which connects to
the internet. If the computers from one location wish to communicate with the computers in another location,
they must send their data to the router which works with other routers in the internet and it will travel to its
proper destination's router and be sent throughout that private network.

How do you see your IP address?

In order to see your IP address, you must first open the windows command prompt. To do this, hit the
Windows key + R at the same time. Once this is opened, type in "cmd".

This will open the command prompt. This is used to run various commands inside of windows. You can
actually completely control a computer without the need of a mouse if you know the proper commands.

Once in the command prompt, you can type "ipconfig" to see your IP Address:

This is a very useful as we will always use this to see what the IP of the DVR is and also note that the "Default
Gateway" is the IP address of the router that this PC is connected to.

PING

Another very useful tool is the PING tool. This is used to test connection to another IP address (Private or
Public. This is also typed into the command prompt and is typed: "ping X.X.X.X" where you would replace the
X's with the IP you wish to test. So for example, my phone which is connected to my WiFI network has an IP
address of 192.168.1.141.

When you receive reply's, that is indication that the device is online. Compare to below to an address that
does not exist on my network:

TRACERT:
Trace route is a tool used to track the number of hops (routers) from the current location to the destination
address. This tool is useful at DTT to see if the DVR is connected to more than one router, in which case, you
would have to do double port forwarding. In the below example, you can see that the computer is connected to
multiple routers locally because it has more than one private IP as a hop (1 MS Ping indicates also that the
device is local. Anything between 1-10ms may be local)

DNS:
it serves as the phone book for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP
addresses. For example, the domain name www.example.com translates to the addresses 93.184.216.119
(IPv4). We would never remember all the websites IP addresses but with the use of DNS we can type in the
host name (www.google.com) and the DNS server will lookup the IP and connect our web browser to the
proper web server of www.google.com

DTT uses DNS as the DVR's are commonly accessed by customers remotely via their phones or laptop. We
utilize DNS so that the customers can connect by an easily remembered domain name instead of an IP
address. The DVR will have a PUBLIC IP address that is assigned by the internet provider, and we have a
DNS server that we update to translate the name. The issue that comes from this is that the Internet Provider
changes the IP that is given every once in a while, and when this happens DNS will no longer work. The way
DTT solves that problem is by running a program on the server every day which updates the DNS server with
the current IP address. You can check what your computer is translating an address to by using the
NSLOOKUP tool

NSLOOKUP:
NAME SERVER LOOKUP is a tool used to see what IP your dns server has for a given domain name. For
example, if I want to see the IP of www.google.com, I would type in the following:

The IP of the web server that hosts www.google.com is 74.125.28.99. If you type that into your web browser it
would take you to the website.

Port Forwarding:
All internet data uses IP addresses to travel the internet however it also uses ports. Ports are used by services
on the computer/server and allow connections to come in and out on them. A web server such as one that
hosts www.google.com would run the web server on port 80. So this means that all incoming traffic needs to
have a destination port of 80 to get to the website.

The problem with this is that on networks where they have multiple private IP's behind 1 public IP, the
incoming traffic would not know where to go exactly as outside networks cannot communicate directly with
private computers. So basically understand that the DVR that DTT installs runs remote services on ports 8866
- 8925. When a client uses their phone to connect to their server to view the cameras, the phone will send a
connection request on one of the ports in 8866 - 8925. Once it hits the router of the DVR location, the router
needs to know where to send this request exactly.

Port forwarding is configuring the router to send all data on a specific port or range of ports to a specific device
on a network. So what you would have to do is login to the router, and go to the port forwarding page and
configure all traffic that comes in on those ports will be forwarded to the IP ADDRESS of the DVR.

As you can see, I have configured all traffic incoming on ports 8866 through 8925 to be directed to my pc
which has the IP of 192.168.1.100.

DHCP
DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. This is a service on routers and servers that sends
computers/devices their IP configuration information and sets it up automatically. When you connect your
computer to your wireless router, it automatically works. There is no configuring the IP address or anything
needed on your end. This is because DHCP is enabled by default. When you use your phone to connect to
WiFi, the phone uses DHCP to get the info automatically. This is very useful for most purposes however the
problem is that the DHCP server on the router could give you different IPs each time you connect. This is an
issue because when you configure port forwarding on the router you specific the IP address, so if it changes,
the forwarding will no longer work.
In windows (and all devices) you can manually configure the IP address and all the needed info instead of
using DHCP. This is require to maintain constant working service. When you manually set the IP to one that
never changes, this is called a STATIC IP ADDRESS. In order to configure this, you need to open the network
properties of your network interface card. To do this, bring up the Run box again, and this time, type
"NCPA.CPL" (This is a shortcut, you can manually access this by going into windows control panel and going
to network connections)

Next right click on the network adapter, and go to properties.

Once in the properties, look for Internet Protocol Version 4 and double click that.

Once you double click that, you will be at the IP settings. You will have to choose use the following IP Address