Step one is to log into your network switch (aka router). You can do this with any web browser and type in the local URL of the switch, usually http://192.168.1.1. Once in your network switch you should be able to find out the IPs of everything using the network. For my Netgear switch it's on the “Home” tab under “Attached Devices”. Now go in there and write down all the addresses of your IP cameras. These IP addresses are usually dynamic (aka temporary) and can change if your power to your network switch or your camera is turned off. Also while you are here you want to look around at all the IP addresses.

Here is what I call the different parts of the IP address using 192.168.1.10 as an example.

• 192 > network prefix;
• 168 > network suffix;
• 1 > host prefix;
• 10 > host suffix.

What I did was looked to see if anything was using a host suffix of 51 through 59 and if not then I would set camera #1 to have a permanent address of 192.168.1.51, camera #2 to have a permanent address of 192.168.1.52, and so on.

Next, using the browser I logged into each IP camera's firmware individually. So in my case camera #1 was temporarily set at 192.168.1.10. I found the “Network” tab in the firmware and changed the IP address from “dynamic” to “static” (the verbiage could be something else but should be similar) then I changed 192.168.1.10 to 192.168.1.51. Then I saved the change. Then I repeated this for each camera on the network. If I add a camera later I can just go into my network switch's firmware and looked at the attached devices to see what IP address to use next.

However, foreseeing that I might add cameras in the future I decided to name my cameras in Blue Iris with the permanent host suffix for that camera. So the camera on the south side of my house is “south51” and the full IP address is 192.168.1.51.