Watching Home Cameras and a NAS in China from Abroad

• Vendor-cloud app (Ezviz, Xiaomi, TP-Link, Imou and similar): the camera pushes video to the vendor’s servers and the app pulls from there. Mostly works abroad; some regions restricted or very slow.
• NVR or NAS visible only on the home LAN: no public entry, unreachable from abroad. The most common and the hardest case.
• Vendor app, but the overseas store edition talks to overseas servers: accounts do not match and login fails.

The path from an overseas network to a Chinese vendor’s servers is poor, showing as slow loading and stalls. On the China route the traffic uses domestic lines and improves noticeably. Install Cisco or Hiddify on the phone and choose the China region; with many people and devices at home, use the router option.

The same-name app in an overseas store usually connects to overseas servers with separate accounts. Install the Chinese edition; on iPhone that needs a China-region Apple ID (or the Chinese account you already had).

1. Keep one always-on device at home — a PC, NAS, Raspberry Pi, or a router on this site’s firmware. Install the Tailscale client, log in to the private network with your site account, and enable “share the LAN” (subnet routes); a router on our firmware can share the LAN into the network directly.
2. Log your overseas phone or laptop into the same private-network account.
3. From then on the overseas device opens the NVR or NAS admin page, or the camera app’s “add on LAN” entry, using the home LAN address — exactly as if you were at home. No public IP, no port forwarding.
4. Install on as many devices as you like; 2, 4 or 8 can be online at once (Personal, Family, Enterprise) — on Family that is one at home plus a few abroad.

A device bought in China is bound to a Chinese account, and the overseas store’s app cannot log in. The only fix is the Chinese edition with the original account; do not re-bind the device, which would kick your family’s account off.

• Home camera footage should flow only between your devices and your home. The private network prefers a direct peer-to-peer path and uses a relay only when direct fails; footage is never stored on any server. Vendor-cloud footage passes through the vendor.
• Never use “tunnelling tools” or “remote home viewers” of unknown origin — that hands your cameras to someone else; see the guide on recognising risky VPN apps.
• Do not open public port forwards for the NAS; reach it through the private network, and change the admin page’s factory password.