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[salsbst1]

Greetings.

I tried running Gizmo from my Android to an installation of MC on my office computer.  No problems.  Worked the first time.  The computer has a private IP and is natted to a public *static* IP facing the internet.  All the inbound ports are blocked so it only works when I'm WIFI'ed into the office's LAN. Fine, I didn't expect any more than that!

At home, I've not had any success.  My home network has a public *dynamic* IP but I've got a fairly complicated DNS setup that ultimately means that I have public domain names the *do* properly resolve to my public IP.  Home LAN machines also run with private IPs and I use port forwarding as necessary to exposes services.

So,  here's the layout that relates to MC.

MC Machine
192.168.6.11 mask 255.255.0.0 gateway 192.168.129.1 (this is the ISP router).

On the ISP router, I have port forwarding set up for 52199 to go to 192.168.6.11.

So, my expectation was the *regardless* of whether my Android is WIFI'ed *in* my LAN (with an IP of, say, 192.168.7.21/255.255.0.0) or on someone else's LAN, I would be able to connect to my library.

But in reading the Network Access wiki page ( http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Network_Access ), I see:

    *  The access key is a six character alphabetic string, which tells another copy of MC what server and IP address to connect to.

    * The test feature attempts to connect from a JRiver server directly to the server running on your PC. It the port is open all the way, it will succeed.

Right now I can't connect from within my LAN *or* from outside of it.

I'd like to understand a little bit more about how MC is determining the access key (in particular to what extent it cares about domain names including reverse lookups, and which IPs might be associated with the access key).

I can configure my LAN DNS (as in, not the DNS exposed to the internet, but just internally served) to give the MC machine a name, e.g. jrmc.test.com that resolves to the LAN IP (192.168.6.11), and I can also register a public DNS entry for jrmc.test.com (that everyone outside of my LAN sees) to resolve to my ISP router's public IP.  In fact, this is what I do for the websites I host.

So ideally, I could run one instance of MC on the box that will have an alias of jrmc.test.com and it would be accessible from my LAN and from the internet.

Is this possible?  Am I doing something wrong?

I would have at least expected to be able to connect when my Android is in my LAN (since that should be the same as how it works in my office)... but no.

So, I hope somebody can help me understand how the whole access key thing works.  Thanks in advance!

[JimH]

Sometimes it's something simple (forgive me for suggesting the obvious).  Wireless LAN on at your phone?  Library Server turned on in MC?  Firewall?

Options has a test under Media Network.

Port forwarding for both UDP and TCP?  I'm not sure which it needs.

Use build 171 from the download page if you're not.

Try generating a new access key.

[salsbst1]

Thanks, Jim.

*Wireless on phone: definitely checked, incl. the IP address in the LAN

*Library Server on?  Almost positive (it was pretty darned late at night, will double check)

*Tested under Media Network: check... both with and without port forwarding.  In either case the test behaved as expected.

*Reset access key: tried that.

*DLNA (it looks like you might have edited your post which previously mentioned DLNA) -- I think I enabled this when things didn't work and enabling it didn't help... and now I'm confused as to whether it's needed or not... but I'll leave it on until I get things working and then back off the setting and see if things stop working

*Port forwarding: I'll need to check this... router may only be configured (and may only be configurable) to forward TCP... but this shouldn't have affected access within my LAN if the proper server IP (192.168.6.11) is being used by Gizmo to access the MC machine, right?

I'll also try 171 build.  I don't think that it was offered in the app when I launched it.

So barring any other advice, I'll try that which is mentioned above tonight and see what happens.  Wireshark (packet sniffing) is a PITA and I have no idea how to do it on my Android, so hopefully something will right itself before I have to sniff packets.

Can I take it from your lack of addressing the internal vs. external IP question that once I solve whatever is plaguing me (well, MC and Gizmo, actually), that the internal vs. external question will be moot?

Regards,
Stuart

[JimH]

If it's configured correctly, either internal or external should work.

I did change the post.  DLNA is not needed for this.

[wig]

Stuart, try going to webplay.jriver.com\[yourlibraryserverid] to confirm that it is registering the right ip's. It should list the internal and external addresses there.

[salsbst1]

Thanks, wig!  I can see the one I registered at my office (and I can see that it stored both an internal and external IP), but the one at home is not found at all.... so I guess that's where I'll start when I get home, b/c obviously ain't nothin gonna work until that registration happens.

[salsbst1]

Ok, I'm in.  Thanks for your help.  For whatever reason, last night's registration must have not "taken".

I love this Gizmo thing! 

And now.... I'm worried that the registration seems (from the webpage) to be based upon an IP address for the server's external access.

I'm on a dynamic IP.  I have a dyndns.org name for the dynamic IP, so if there was a way to make sure that my server's access code was tied to a domain name instead of an IP, I could sure use it!  If I'm misreading the situation or if anyone knows of workarounds, I'm all ears! 

Just thinking out loud here: would Gizmo be able to respond properly to an HTTP redirect if it came from the server's registered IP?  If so, I could probably find a static IP out therer somewhere where I could host a simple redirect to my dyndns.org name.... obviously that's ugly compared to being able to just define a domain name with J River's server instead of an IP address.

Or maybe you're going to tell me that my MC instance periodically calls up the J River server to give it a chance to update the public IP?  And I should worry less and go enjoy some music?

[JimH]

Or maybe you're going to tell me that my MC instance periodically calls up the J River server to give it a chance to update the public IP?  And I should worry less and go enjoy some music?

Pretty much.