Depending on the device you're trying to reach and the IP address it is set to, you would need to change some settings on your MAC accordingly. In this example, we'll be setting up a MAC laptop to access our CM70 series camera at its default IP address which is http://192.168.5.163
What is a Subnet Mask
First thing that we need to do is to make sure we're set up to access the same subnet. A subnet mask is used to split up IP addresses into two parts, where one part addresses the computer itself and the other part describes to which network it belongs. The subnet mask basically tells you which part of the IP address describes these two.
To keep things nice and simple the subnet mask usually is defined in a form like this: 255.255.255.000 In this case, the first 3 sections of the IP address are reserved to define the network and the last section is used to define the computer's IP address within this network. In our example, looking at http://192.168.5.163 the first three sections are 192.168.5, this is our network, and the last section describes the IP address of the camera: 163
We need to match these details on our computer. For a more in-depth article about how subnets work, please have a look at a great article explaining subnets in detail by Microsoft.
Setting up the Subnet on your MAC
1. Open the network settings by clicking on the Wifi logo on the top of the screen. Next click on 'Network Preferences'.
2. Set the Ethernet settings to Manual (usually set to DHCP, where the computer will automatically be assigned an IP address from the modem/router. Enter an IP address within the same subnet of the camera. In our case we can choose anything in the range 192.168.5 and choose an address that is not equal to the device we try to reach, since our camera is set to 163, we can choose a random address between 1-162 and 164-254. The subnet mask should be set to 255.255.255.0:
3. Click 'Apply' and you're good to go. Open a browser and enter the IP address of the camera:
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