It’s possible to check all the users connected to an Axis camera or encoder. It’s a piece of information that may become useful if you are trying to find out if unauthorized people or devices are accessing your security system.
You can check the connected users by accessing the camera’s web interface and taking a look at the listed established connections.
The interface differs between the cameras running the old Axis firmware (old interface) and the newer versions. Either way, the logic, and the steps are very similar. In this guide, we will give examples for both cases.
How to check the Axis camera connections
To understand what these connections mean, you need to think of Axis devices acting as a server that other devices connect to using specific port numbers.
Different ports are designed for different services. For example, port 80 is the HTTP port used by web services, HTTPS (port 43) does the same thing but the connection is secure (that’s what “s” stands for). RTSP connection is realized via port 554, etc. (You can learn more about Axis ports here).
Devices (technically called “clients”) such as NVRs (Network Video Recorder), DVR (Digital Video Recorder), VMS (Video Management System), CMS (Camera Management System) connect to the Axis camera using these specific ports (and other that depending on the type of request).
You can check the live connection on the camera to determine what ports are being used, what IP addresses are requesting the connection, and hence checking the users accessing the camera.
Below we will demonstrate how you can check the connection on the older and newer interfaces.
Axis camera: Check the user on the old web interface
Access the camera via the web browser and click Setup on top of the panel. On the left side navigate to System Options > Support > System Overview and click over the Connected clients button (as shown on the screenshot below).
For example, it shows one connection, which is a video (it can list audio ones as well). The account that is utilizing this connection is the user “root” with IP address 192.168.1.66 and port in use is HTTP (80).
Depending on your camera, you may have other connections. Just remember, one IP address indicates one user, regardless of how many connections there are. In our example, we have only one user communicating with the cameras.
Axis camera: Check user on the new web interface
Using the same logic, access the camera and click the System on the control panel. From there click the TCP/IP menu as shown in the picture below.
On the right side of the page, you can see the connected users and their IP addresses. Currently, only one user is connected to the camera and it’s using the HTTP port 80.
Basically, that’s it. Whatever camera you have, regardless of the model and interface, will display the connected users.
Additionally, you can also check the connected users via the server report. Navigate to the camera maintenance menu, download the server report and take a look at the listed connections. The report gives information such as the established connections, the IP addresses, ports in use, type, etc.
You can investigate the connection to see if there’s anything out of place. If you see an external IP address, google it and see where it’s coming from.
This method is good to see if unauthorized IP addresses are accessing your camera. If so, change the password immediately and update the camera.
