Chinese IP Camera System - Annke - Blocking and Suggested Third party software (ONVIF)

Hi All you Smart People.
This is a bit of rambling comment/asking for suggestions as just read it again! Sorry!

I have been running 4 home IP cameras, on a Windows system (Sorry!) I use BlueIris software that is windows only but it just sits there and runs and runs as a service.
I did buy in 2016 4 cams that are Annke Branded but use the ONVIF protocol so easy to set up. I know they “phone” home so you can use there “Cloud system” for monitoring. So i just block the MAC/IP address from WAN access from my router. (Mikrotik) Will that be enough for them to stop phoning home a simple firewall rule to block all 4 devices? Or could they have a way of smashing through my “firewall” I know just about enough on firewalls and NAT to be vaguely competent but not enough so i could be dangerous with settings! :slight_smile:
I also really want to upgrade my server to become a linux (Unsure of distro yet either!) not windows. I am very used to windows BTW) Always had a play but always broke something and killed my server. “All” i run on my server is Plex, Blueiris CCTV Software, and “cough” torrenting. I use socks 5 proxy for torrenting only on the torrenting program usually. Minecraft Bedrock server for the kids and me when my daughter moans enough and i play for hours…!, FIle sharing and Teamspeak 3 Server.
Plex i could probably muddle through to get working. File sharing, Minecraft and Teamspeak i could muddle through as well. But it is the CCTV/IP camera software that i want to run on Linux as well, Any one got any suggestions for alternative products?
Blueiris i did pay for. But you get good stuff for your money, It runs a web server for you to access on the WAN connection live feeds, motion sensing, masked areas. and its got its own android and apple (Yuk!) apps so you can get notification of motion sensing alerts. Also my home setup is recording all cameras constantly to my onboard drive 3tb (about 2 weeks worth of footage) and all my motion sensing alerts and videos i save them to a folder within my OneDrive so it uploads to the cloud as well instantly.
Server spec are HPE Microserver 8, Xeon E3-1265L, 4 core 8 thread, 16Gb ECC Mem. Nvidia 1050Ti for encoding and decoding, 500Gb SSD as C Drive, 2 x 6Tb onboard RAID 0, 1 x 3tb Data Storage (OneDrive!) 1 x 3tb CCTV Purple WD Drive.
I am reluctant to upgrade the server hardware as this is “plenty” for my needs. Just wish the Microserver 8 had 2 PCI-E slots.
Sorry about the long post!
Thanks for Reading

Matt

No issue with Windows here, ignore the linux people who screeh about that. There are advantages/disadvantages) to every OS, and different people manage them.

Assuming static IP assignment / hardcoded on device?

It would be better to put them on a private vlan that doesn’t have the ability to route.

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