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[TCoz]

When trying to access my library from another computer using the access key, the connection times out and fails for an unknown reason. I've also tried to connect to my library using JRemote and the connection also fails.

I'm running media center 19 and have tried resetting the access key and re-installing the program to no avail. I also allowed incoming access to the relevant port in Windows Firewall which had no effect.

I believe it may be something to do with my internet connection, namely I'm a student and use the university's public wifi, eduroam. I didn't encounter this problem when using my home wi-fi so I'm guessing that's where the problem lies.

Attached are the connection summary and server response given by JRemote when trying to add the server.

Any help would be much appreciated,

Tom

[Vocalpoint]

When trying to access my library from another computer using the access key, the connection times out and fails for an unknown reason. I've also tried to connect to my library using JRemote and the connection also fails.

I stopped using the "access key" method long ago. I now exclusively connect to my media server via IP only. Seems to never let me down.

VP

[TCoz]

Yeah I've tried that too but it still gives the "timed out" error message. It's quite frustrating because I've spent £8 on JRemote which is now effectively useless. 
Thanks for the suggestion though.

[glynor]

The Access Key system is used to work around the facts that most people:

1. have dynamic IPs for both their home Internet connection and often their internal LAN connections as well.
2. don't typically have a router that can do "Full NAT" resolving for hostnames on the LAN (configuration to direct connections to the internal IP for traffic inside the network, and to the WAN IP for traffic outside the network)

It is, essentially, just a dynamic IP lookup system, which can store both the internal LAN and external WAN address associated with a particular Media Server.

It works like this:

* When you register a particular server copy of MC for an Access Key, it registers with JRiver's servers.
* When this copy of MC is starting up, and periodically while running, it checks in with JRiver's servers and "registers" this Access Key to point to its various IP addresses in their database.
* When a client copy of MC (or JRemote or Gizmo) connects to a server using an Access Key, it asks JRiver's servers for the most recent IPs for that Access Key and then attempts to connect directly to the addresses provided.

Therefore, for the Access Key system to work, two things must be true:

1. JRiver's access key servers need to be up and working. They have very occasional downtime, but this is not common by any means.
2. The connecting client must be able to connect directly to the stored internal LAN IP or WAN IP (via port forwarding on the router, typically) on the Port being used for MC's Media Network functions (52199 by default, though you can change this in the server's Options).

If your client is unable to connect to the server, then the most likely cause is that a firewall is blocking connections to the server on some "end" of the connection.

For example, to access your Media Server from outside of your home network, you will need to either set up a VPN connection to your LAN (so that the server sees the traffic internally) or you must forward the port through your firewall to the appropriate server on the LAN side. If you didn't forward the port through your home firewall (and possibly disable or allow the traffic through the software firewall on the server itself), then this could be the cause if you are trying to connect from outside your home LAN.

It could also be that the wireless network you're using at the device end blocks traffic on ports it doesn't recognize. This is somewhat common with corporate, hotel, and other institutional networks. In this case you can try changing your port on the home server to a commonly used internet port that the WiFi provider can't block (without disrupting "regular" web traffic too), such as 8080 or even just 80 (the regular web server port). The traffic sent between JRemote and MC is just plain-old HTTP traffic, so unless the network you're using is completely locked down (only allowing connections to whitelisted web hosts, for example) it should be possible to avoid these kinds of restrictions. Another good strategy if you encounter these kinds of restrictions often is to configure a home VPN setup, so that your device can connect to your home network through an encrypted tunnel. This provides way better security than MC does on its own (which is minimal, at best) and will usually bypass these kinds of restrictions on institutional wifi networks.

You can test your access key easily from any computer or device using the Web Remote functionality of MC. If you can't reach this page from the device itself, then JRemote (or Gizmo) will also not work:
http://webremote.jriver.com/<YOUR ACCESS KEY HERE>

For more information, see:
* http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Network_Access
* http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Server
* http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Network

[TCoz]

Changing the port to 80 or 8080 had no effect and even using a VPN service hasn't helped at all. Now when using JRemote and trying to connect to the server using the access key, it says is "found 3 addresses", two of which when it tried to connect resulted in the "timed out" error and connecting to the 3rd IP gave the error message: "ConnectFailure (Conection refused)".

This is really puzzling, I assumed using a VPN would solve the issue but apparently not.

Thanks a lot for your advice, any other suggestions would be much appreciated.

Tom

[glynor]

If your client is unable to connect to the server, then the most likely cause is that a firewall is blocking connections to the server on some "end" of the connection.