So at work we have gotten a slew of service calls for Hikvision camera systems beeping. They start beeping around 4:00am to 5:00am. These customers are also AT&T internet subscribers.
Hooking up a monitor to the NVR or DVR and look in the logs we see a “IP Conflicted” error. Meaning the DVR/NVR sees a second device on the network using the same IP Address. However there isn’t a second device on the network trying to use the same IP. All three calls I’ve been on this week I checked using Fing and looking at the device list in the modem gateway. These are systems that have been in place for three years or more and the modems are the older black boxes that uses a white ONT box where the fiber line runs into the home.
By default the audible alarm is enabled when a IP Conflicted error pops up. It can be disabled. The performance doesn’t change when this error pops up. However we get complaints that they cant see the cameras but the reason why is they unplug the NVR/DVR to stop the beeping before we get there. After we power it back up and disable the audible alarm it works just fine.
My guess is AT&T pushed a software update to these modem gateways and now it’s doing something funny with the DHCP server portion.
So surprise surprise, ATT doesn’t want to deal with it let alone know how to deal with it. ATT’s tech support reads a script and if nothing works they want to send out a truck as a billable service call and that tech is gonna ride the clock and then point the finger at us. We then show up as a billable service and fix it with in five minutes.
So if you’re experiencing this issue you can either fix it yourself. You can watch this video and follow it but instead of “Network Disconnected” you select “IP Conflicted”. If you don’t want to deal with it then call the company that installed the system. Chances are it will be a billable service call but while they’re there you can have them do a full workup on the system like checking the health of the hard drive, tweak any motion sensitivity or what have you. I personally don’t like doing five minutes of work and charging for the whole hour. I will do a full workup on the system to give the customer their whole hour worth of labor if possible.