DW Spectrum - Internet Traffic Generated By DW Spectrum

What Internet Traffic Will DW Spectrum® Systems Generate?

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Affected Roles: Owner, Administrator

Related Digital Watchdog VMS Apps: DW Spectrum IPVMS

Last Edit: February 1, 2021

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Web Traffic

Internet-connected DW Spectrum® Systems will generate web traffic as long as any one of a System’s servers has Internet access.

This article will outline the web traffic details and purposes behind these services for the DW Spectrum® IPVMS platform.

**NOTE: For a list of the DW Spectrum and DW Cloud™ network ports and connections, check out DW Spectrum - FQDN or Allowlist for DW Cloud Access.

DW Spectrum® Services

Public IP Address Fetching

To maintain Internet connectivity, a DW Spectrum® Server behind a NAT (Network address translation) must be assigned a Public IP address, like any other device that connects with the Internet. The DW Spectrum® Server uses a web service to determine its own Public IP address every two (2) minutes, so it is common to see web traffic occurring frequently.

Time Synchronization

To synchronize the System time of a DW Spectrum® Server, any Server with an active Internet connection will request data from the DW Spectrum Time Server (a non-public, DW hosted time server) to synchronize time, approximately once every hour.

Anonymous Usage and Crash Statistics

DW Spectrum® Systems that do not disable the Anonymous Usage and Crash Statistics setting will report back to the DW Spectrum® software developers once a month.

DW Cloud™

Systems that are connected to the DW Cloud™ platform will generate web traffic due to:

Maintaining a connection between DW Cloud™ and DW Spectrum®
Adding new users or modifying users
Active user connections and streaming to remote clients (desktop, mobile, web, or cloud), etc.

How do I block all outbound traffic on a DW Spectrum System?

If you want to disable all web traffic to and from a DW Spectrum System, it is recommended that you contact your IT Representative or Network Administrator for assistance.

To make this happen, the connections to the Internet must be disabled for the DW Spectrum® Server by creating Firewall or SonicWall policies that prevents all inbound or outbound traffic from the TCP Port (7001, by default) of your DW Spectrum® Server. This will cause the Server to only be accessible using internal network traffic (i.e. Intranet).