Features

The disadvantage of using a webcam is that your PC or laptop has to be left on, and the computer also has to be set up nearby to where you want to watch - not always practical if it's the front door you wish to monitor. An alternative, albeit a more expensive one, is to opt for an IP camera. IP cameras connect directly to your router and allow you to view their video feeds using a web browser on any internet-connected computer, or a PC on your local network. You could even view the video feeds from a mobile phone, provided your 3G data connection is fast enough. Some IP cameras also have a microphone so you can hear what's going on, while others have a memory card slot for recording still images or videos directly on to local storage.

Most IP cameras have both ethernet and Wi-Fi, so you can mount them anywhere in your router's wireless range without trailing cables around the house. Usually, you'll need to attach an IP camera with an ethernet cable to initially configure the wireless settings, and if you follow our walkthrough, you'll have your camera working in no time.

IP cameras can cost as little as £80, but if your budget can stretch to another £100 you can buy a pan-and-tilt model. Standard cameras are fixed, but pan-and-tilt models have small motors that allow you to remotely control where they're pointing, simply by clicking direction buttons in the web interface. Some models also provide a zoom, but ignore the digital-only zooms since they don't

Video quality varies, with our favourite sub-£200 choice being the D-Link DCS-2120 and the Axis 212 PTZ (web ID: 97780) - a great choice if you can spare £400. It's rare to find an IP camera with a resolution higher than 640 x 480, though, so detail may pale in comparison to the best webcams. It's also worth noting that, like most webcams, the majority of IP cameras are useless in the dark since they don't have infrared sensors.

If you need more than one camera, there's no need to buy identical models. Mixing and matching fixed cameras with pan-and-tilt cameras isn't a problem. However, the biggest difficulty with IP cameras is opening the correct ports in your router's firewall to allow the web interface and video to be viewable across the internet. Most modern routers support UPnP, as do many IP cameras, but we've not yet seen a pairing that's able to automatically open ports during installation. It means you'll have to delve deep into your router's web interface and create a couple of rules to open the right outbound ports - usually port 80 for HTTP and port 554 for RTSP.

Another potential hurdle is dynamic IP addresses. To view your camera's video feed, you must know your external IP address, which will be different from your router's internal address (likely to be 192.168.2.1 or similar). Unless your broadband package includes a static IP, your external IP address will change each time your router reconnects to your ISP. The only way to keep track of your current address is to use a DDNS (dynamic domain name server) service. Most modern routers have this feature built in; you simply choose a provider from the list, go to its website and sign up for a free account. This usually allows you to choose a free domain name, like pcpro.dyndns.org, which is tied to your current IP address. Each time your external IP address changes, your router forwards the information to your chosen DDNS provider, which then updates the address that your domain name points to. So, all you need to do is browse to your domain name.