topic Re: How does Arlo work at the networking level in Arlo

How does Arlo work at the networking level

villadso — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 03:32:11 GMT

Can anyone please explain how Arlo works at the networking level? For example, if I am at work and want to watch a live feed of my Arlo camera at my home and I log in to arlo.netgear.com (or use the smartphone app), how is the signal getting from the WAN side of my network through my gateway and to the cameras/base stations to tell them to send a live video feed to the Arlo servers where I can access and view them? I am all the more curious because there are no open ports for inbound connections i.e. communication is only allowed outbound on ports 80, 443 and 123, right?

The only explanation that I can think of is that the cameras/base station are periodically attempting to make a connection to Arlo servers every few seconds, which is refused until I log on to arlo.netgear.com, at which point the outbound connection from the Arlo cameras/base station are accepted.

Please be advised that everything is working perfectly, I am just trying to understand how this works from a networking perspective. I searched the forums and documentation but could not find any answers. Thanks in advance for any light you can shed.

Re: How does Arlo work at the networking level

Delboyii — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 07:32:53 GMT

Me too - understanding how this works would assist when trouble shooting the various issues being raised in the forums.

Re: How does Arlo work at the networking level

jguerdat — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 14:01:47 GMT

We can only guess unless some networking guru has the time, equipment and desire to figure it out. My suspicion is that the base creates an outgoing connection and either keeps it open or keeps opening new connections which allows incoming packets to be accepted through the already open connection. That way no holes need to be punched in the firewall.