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[RoderickGI]

G'Day folk. I am evaluating J River and so far like it a lot. Not perfect, but I can see the potential, and love some of the capabilities.

Anyway, I hit a little problem and can't find an answer here, so thought I had better ask. I was evaluating version 18.0.206 until yesterday, then upgraded to 18.0.209. I have a HTPC acting as a Media Server, and have been testing streaming and so on from a second installation of J River on my office PC. Both PCs are on a wired network with a router in between. I did NOT open any ports on my router to allow the MC client to find the MC Media Server on the HTPC. I generated an Access Key on the HTPC and used it on the PC client to connect to the Media Server.

In 206 this worked fine, playing music and videos, and editing a whole lot of media file attributes, with the client synchronising with the server just fine.

I installed 209 over 206 so all settings were retained. After this change the client would not connect to the server. It used the Access Code to lookup my Public IP Address, and tried to use that to connect to the Media Server. Obviously that wasn't going to work as I haven't opened port 52199 on the router so it wasn't going to let an unsolicited connection request through to the HTPC.

I changed the settings so that the client connected directly to the server using the Private IP Address and port number. Obviously that works fine, but in the future I may want access to the server over the internet, as is intended by the Media Network functionality. I may want to be able to set a TV program to record or something, or play a tune or video for someone. You never know. 

So, my concerns;
1. Was this an intended change in functionality?
I was assuming that the MC Client first looked on the LAN for the MC Server using the Access Key, and if it wasn't available, then used the Access Key to look up a Public IP Address to connect to and find the server. Version 18.0.206 seemed to do this. Version 18.0.209 does not.
2. If it doesn't work as above, how much data is being sent out to J River if the connection is made via a Public IP Address lookup?
I hope none of the streamed media goes out of my LAN to the internet and then back again, as that would use a lot of my data allowance, not to mention being silly.

I understand why an Access Key is required and what it does, working somewhat like a Dynamic DNS Service, and identifying a unique MC server. But I wasn't expecting this change in functionality, even though it is consistent with the underlying intent of the Access Key functionality.

Any comments or clarification?

[JimH]

Welcome to the board.  The Access Key method registers bbth your outside and inside IP addresses.  Connections should try both.

There has been no change to this in the last build.

There is more information here:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Network_Access

[RoderickGI]

Thanks for the welcome and reply Jim. Much appreciated.

I was assuming that the client would just shout on the LAN and that the server would respond, rather than link the Access Key to the Private IP Address. The Private IP had changed between when 206 was working and 209 wasn't, as I hadn't set up a reserved IP Address in the router for the Ethernet connection I have been using during testing.

Once I set that up the HTPC Ethernet connection got yet another IP address and I used that to connect. Now this morning I just tested the Access Key connection method using the original Access Key, expecting it to fail because it had the old Private IP Address registered, but it worked.

So I assume that both the IP Addresses registered to the Access Key get updated by the server at some point in time? It just hadn't happened yet when I was testing yesterday. I did try reboots of both PCs before posting, but I think the Private IP Address of the server changed on reboot again. So it was all bad timing.

All fixed now, and all IPs are stable so it should keep working, although the external Public address can change at any time with my broadband provider. I may have to start using a Dynamic DNS service, and a URL when I want to access the server over the internet.

Thanks again.