Axis 207W

How to set up your Axis 207W network camera to work on your wireless network



One of the many benefits of the Axis 207W is its ability to work in a wireless network, giving its owner the freedom of placing the camera in a number of discreet locations with no nasty cables to trip over.
If you have found yourself struggling to set up your camera wirelessly, then let our guide be your path to wireless success.
This guide will be suitable for the following Axis Network cameras (and is helpful for many other manufacturers and models):
  • Axis 207W
  • Axis 207MW

Initial Configuration

We are going to assume that you have already configured your camera and that you can access it locally on your network using a wired connection.

Wireless Differences

There are only a couple of extra settings you need to be aware of when making the jump from a wired installation to wireless one. These would be:
SSID: Short for Sevice Set IDentifier, the SSID is a unique name which identifies your wireless network (WLAN) from another. Devices which attach to your wireless network must use the SSID otherwise they won’t be able to communicate over the network at all. Important note: SSIDs are case sensitive.
Encryption: Most commonly used is WEP, short for Wireless Equivalency Protocol, this is used to secure your WLAN by encrypting the data over radio waves while it’s being sent from one device to another. In order to achieve successful communication, a password, known as the ‘Key’, has to set up in the wireless router and the Axis 207W network camera. Note that this feature is not enabled as standard in your wireless router but it should be one of the first things you do to keep your network secure, otherwise you may find everyone in your street using your internet connection and your home network may no longer be secure (we will discuss this in another article).
MAC Address Filtering: One final thing to note is that on some WLANs there may be additional security in place which restricts which network devices can connect to the WLAN. This is achieved by restricting devices based on their MAC Address. This feature is not enabled as standard on any routers so you only need to worry about this if you know you have set this up previously. However, if you can use this extra layer of security, we advise you to do so.

Example

Let’s look at an example configuration to see how it’s done. We’ll base our settings on the following:
  • We have a Netgear 834PN Wireless Router and Axis 207W network camera.
  • The SSID of our wireless network is ‘NETGEAR’.
  • We have set up WEP encryption, our Key is set to open authentication, 64bit strength with KEY1:AF67B9283C.
All of this information can be gathered from the relevant wireless settings in your router.

Step 1 – Configuring your wireless IP address

The Axis 207W/MW has two entries for its IP address configuration. One for wired configuration and one for wireless.
You will need to configure an IP address for wireless connectivity, otherwise your camera will not be detected on the network and will not work wirelessly.
It’s safe to use exactly the same details as your wired configuration.

Step 2 – Enter your wireless settings

Log in to your camera and enter the ‘Setup’ pages.
From the menu on the left Choose ‘Wireless’.
As shown in the diagram below, the top of the page will show all the wireless networks within range, the SSID will be blank and there will be no security set.
wireless page axis 207W
Using your own wireless network details you need to enter the correct SSID in the box provided and match the security settings in your router.
In this example our SSID is ‘NETGEAR’ with our security setting being WEP with open authentication, 64bit strength and on KEY1: AF67B9283C.
We enter this information into the page as shown below:

wireless configuration page axis 207W
Click the ‘Save’ button to save your wireless settings and your camera should now be configured to work on your wireless network, so restart the camera, unplug the ethernet cable and be free from wires.

Some Troubleshooting

If you find you have entered all the correct information as above and your camera will still not work wirelessly then here’s a few suggestions.
  • Check case sensitivity. The SSID is case sensitive so if you type ‘netgear’ instead of ‘NETGEAR’ your camera will not work wirelessly.
  • Check you have entered the correct security information. If your router says “Open Key”, “128bit Encryption” and shows a suitable WEP Key ensure that all this information is exactly the same in the camera.
  • If your connection seems intermittent or you are receiving a poor connection you may be experiencing interference. To combat this you can change the channel in your wireless router which will alter the frequency of your wireless network and may improve reception.
  • Try power-cycling the camera
If you have any comments or questions about this guide please leave them below and we will do our best to answer them as soon as possible.

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