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mikey32230
join:2015-01-31

mikey32230

Member

WOW Ultra TV HomeConnect + Netgear DLNA Media Server (Help)

Hi,

I am was curious if i am able to get the DLNA media server created by my netgear router to show up under HomeConnect in the UltraTV gateway?

I PREVIOUSLY had the gateway acting as the DHCP server (wifi-off) and the netgear router set up in AP mode. With this setup the gateway was able to see my Routers DLNA server, however I could not use any of the routers features (VPN, QoS, etc).

I have currently switched the set up so that my netgear router acts as a DHCP server on its own, while the gateway also remains DCHP (wifi-off). The gateway is connected to the router's Yellow Internet port. This way I can use more of my routers features. However, now the DLNA media server does not show up under home connect.

Can someone explain to me why? or is there a way I can get the gateway to see my DLNA server while retaining this set up?

Please let me know, any help is appreciated. Cheers!
Body Count
join:2010-09-11
Columbus, OH

Body Count

Member

You need to let the gateway assign IP address's and your netgear router as AP mode for DNLA to work. That's the only way.

You most likely wont be able to use your routers features but the gateway has some features as backup you can use.
mikey32230
join:2015-01-31

mikey32230

Member

said by Body Count:

You need to let the gateway assign IP address's and your netgear router as AP mode for DNLA to work. That's the only way.

You most likely wont be able to use your routers features but the gateway has some features as backup you can use.

Well the gateway is still assigning some up addresses... It gave my router 192.168.0.20. So I don't understand why it cant see it still
Body Count
join:2010-09-11
Columbus, OH

Body Count

Member

It has to give IP's to stuff connected to your router as well. Your router must have DHCP turned off.
RemyL75
join:2001-06-07
Chicago, IL

RemyL75 to Body Count

Member

to Body Count
It's not the ONLY way, but it is (or should be) the better/easier way. I did this one accidentally (turned the router DLNA on to test and forgot). It does indeed show up under HomeConnect, but you will need to let your gateway handle the ip addresses.
Do you know what model number your router is??
mikey32230
join:2015-01-31

mikey32230

Member

said by RemyL75:

It's not the ONLY way, but it is (or should be) the better/easier way. I did this one accidentally (turned the router DLNA on to test and forgot). It does indeed show up under HomeConnect, but you will need to let your gateway handle the ip addresses.
Do you know what model number your router is??

Yes, I have an Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 (R7000).

Like I have said the gateway does some ip addresses. For example, The router itself and anything else plugged directly into the gateway will have an ip address assigned to it by the gateway. The router handles assigning ip addresses for devices connected to it.

What confuses me is that since the gateway is assigning the router's ip address why cant it see the router's DLNA server? It should have nothing to do with whether the router is handling other devices ip addresses or not.

The only thing i can think of is if the router obtains an Ip address from the gateway, but then also creates one for itself.. I think it is doing this actually because i can access the router at both (192.168.1.1 AND 192.168.0.20)
alan92rttt
join:2012-02-27

alan92rttt to mikey32230

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to mikey32230
The DNLA features of your router are only available to systems inside its internal network.

The yellow internet port is defined as outside its internal network.

There is one one way you might be able to get this to work. (Its a bit of a hack)
1. Configure your netgear to provide IP's in the same range that the gateway does. (192.168.0.xxx I think)
2. Run a second ware from the gateway to one of the routers other ports.

This might work or it might fail horribly.
mikey32230
join:2015-01-31

mikey32230

Member

said by alan92rttt:

The DNLA features of your router are only available to systems inside its internal network.

The yellow internet port is defined as outside its internal network.

There is one one way you might be able to get this to work. (Its a bit of a hack)
1. Configure your netgear to provide IP's in the same range that the gateway does. (192.168.0.xxx I think)
2. Run a second ware from the gateway to one of the routers other ports.

This might work or it might fail horribly.

Thank you for the idea, It is worth a short but sounds like something that will cause conflicts and fail.

I will absolutely give it a try though and see what happens.
lesmikesell
join:2013-06-10
Mount Prospect, IL

lesmikesell to mikey32230

Member

to mikey32230
Just use your netgear as an access point, not a router. That is, connect to the gateway on the LAN ports only and turn off its dhcp service. You can give it a static ip on the 192.168.0.x network out of the range the gateway is configured to assign, maybe 192.168.0.254. Then you should see its DLNA service as well as anything else connected to its other lan ports.
mikey32230
join:2015-01-31

mikey32230 to alan92rttt

Member

to alan92rttt
said by alan92rttt:

The DNLA features of your router are only available to systems inside its internal network.

The yellow internet port is defined as outside its internal network.

There is one one way you might be able to get this to work. (Its a bit of a hack)
1. Configure your netgear to provide IP's in the same range that the gateway does. (192.168.0.xxx I think)
2. Run a second ware from the gateway to one of the routers other ports.

This might work or it might fail horribly.

Okay, So it doesn't fail horribly. It seems really close to be working.. just not quite. So when I plug the gateway in to both the internet port and another normal router port then the computers on the network are able to see the arris gateway DLNA as well as the Netgear media server (as a mapped network drive). However, the netgear DLNA server itself doesnt show up on the computers. the gateway boxes are able to see all the PC windows DLNA servers but not the netgear one.

When I have the gateway plugged into 2 router ports (1 internet, 1 other) I also lose the ability to find the router. It is no longer accessible at 192.168.1.1 nor at anything in the 192.168.0.xxx range.

It also seems like it doesnt matter what scope i give the router (whether it is the same as the gateway or not).

Does this mean anything to any of you?
alan92rttt
join:2012-02-27

alan92rttt to mikey32230

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to mikey32230
It means it will not work.

IMO at this point I think you have to decide which you want more DLNA or the other features.

I use an old PC running XP with a copy of tversity on it.
mikey32230
join:2015-01-31

mikey32230

Member

said by alan92rttt:

It means it will not work.

IMO at this point I think you have to decide which you want more DLNA or the other features.

I use an old PC running XP with a copy of tversity on it.

Good news! I was FINALLY able to get it to work. I spent maybe 3 hours or so tinkering with it yesterday trying all sorts of configurations.

I cant remember exactly what I did in the end, but I do think it had something to do with setting the scope of the router in the range of the gateway like you suggested. When I get back home from work I will to try to recreate it and document it for myself, then I will post the steps on here.

The only weird problem that occurred was that the internal clock (time) of the router became set to some arbitrary date in 2003 and I was unable to change it. Because the internal time was screwed up some features wouldn't work like scheduled wifi on/off. This is why i will try to reset the router and start from scratch again.

I just so happy it is possible
mikey32230

mikey32230 to alan92rttt

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to alan92rttt
said by alan92rttt:

It means it will not work.

IMO at this point I think you have to decide which you want more DLNA or the other features.

I use an old PC running XP with a copy of tversity on it.

Bad news I was mistaken. Basically I was replicating AP mode without actually putting the router into AP mode. I was able to see the Netgear DLNA server and although i wasnt in AP mode and the other features (Vpn, etc) appeared as "available" they do not function because the router doesnt think it is connected to the internet.

Do you think if it flash the router with Tomato or DD-WRT it will make a difference and make this more of a possibility?

OpenWRT_USER
@wideopenwest.com

OpenWRT_USER

Anon

I am not sure how your routers firmware is actually set up, but using OpenWRT (or derivatives) this is quite easy. ReadyMedia (aka MiniDLNA) is the software for Netgear and open projects. Maybe, open up firewall rules to get the on device DLNA to listen.

I just did this at home with TP-LINK WDR3600 (OpenWRT Barrier Breaker 14.07). MiniDLNA needs to listen on the LAN and WAN ("iface"). Firewall needs to allow traffic from 192.168.0.0/24 range (WOW! GW default) UPD:1900 and TCP:8200 to THIS DEVICE.

Sometimes you will need to reset the media boxes to get them to re-identify the DLNA, they do something different at reconnect than normal scanning.

Notice, this gets the DLNA server on the router to listen on the WAN as any computer plugged into the WOW gateway would. This will not port-forward to the routers sub-net. That's a whole other ugly business due to multi-casting.

Due to various network management issues WOW has had, the firewall and other rules on their gateway are less than ideal (security and usability). So I put my router in the DMZ of the WOW GW. This undoes a lot of issues with double-NAT. However then, my firewall rules to the WOW media subnet need to be needle point specific.
OpenWRT_USER

OpenWRT_USER

Anon

OpenWRT UCI (parts)

Firewall

config rule
option target 'ACCEPT'
option src 'wan'
option dest_port '1900'
option family 'ipv4'
option src_ip '192.168.0.0/24'
option proto 'udp'
option name 'Allow-MiniDLNA-UDP'

config rule
option target 'ACCEPT'
option src 'wan'
option proto 'tcp'
option dest_port '8200'
option name 'Allow-MiniDLNA-TCP'
option family 'ipv4'
option src_ip '192.168.0.0/24'

Minidlna

config minidlna 'config'
option db_dir '/var/run/minidlna'
option inotify '1'
option log_dir '/var/log'
option notify_interval '900'
option port '8200'
option root_container '.'
list media_dir 'P,/mnt/usb1/public/pictures'
list media_dir 'V,/mnt/usb1/public/videos'
list media_dir 'A,/mnt/usb1/public/music'
option enabled '1'
option interface 'br-lan,eth0.2'
#br-lan is wire-wifi LAN merged, eth0.2 is TLWDR3600 WAN port.
mikey32230
join:2015-01-31

mikey32230 to OpenWRT_USER

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to OpenWRT_USER
said by OpenWRT_USER :

I am not sure how your routers firmware is actually set up, but using OpenWRT (or derivatives) this is quite easy. ReadyMedia (aka MiniDLNA) is the software for Netgear and open projects. Maybe, open up firewall rules to get the on device DLNA to listen.

I just did this at home with TP-LINK WDR3600 (OpenWRT Barrier Breaker 14.07). MiniDLNA needs to listen on the LAN and WAN ("iface"). Firewall needs to allow traffic from 192.168.0.0/24 range (WOW! GW default) UPD:1900 and TCP:8200 to THIS DEVICE.

Sometimes you will need to reset the media boxes to get them to re-identify the DLNA, they do something different at reconnect than normal scanning.

Notice, this gets the DLNA server on the router to listen on the WAN as any computer plugged into the WOW gateway would. This will not port-forward to the routers sub-net. That's a whole other ugly business due to multi-casting.

Due to various network management issues WOW has had, the firewall and other rules on their gateway are less than ideal (security and usability). So I put my router in the DMZ of the WOW GW. This undoes a lot of issues with double-NAT. However then, my firewall rules to the WOW media subnet need to be needle point specific.

Thank you for the response. I apologize in advance, but i am not super experienced with managing networks to this depth, but I am learning. Can you walk me through in slightly more simple terms?

(Please correct me because i know a lot of this is wrong and makes no sense)
To start this process, I would:
-Plug in the gateway to to Internet/WAN port of my Netgear router?
-Then I am changing the IP address range of the router to something outside that of the gateway (eg. 192.168.1.xxx)?

-Next, I put the netgear router into the DMZ of the wow gateway? (Why do I do this if the router is not in the scope of the gateway? just curious)

-Next, change the firewall rules of the router to what you listed above?

And when you say the DLNA server will not port forward to devices under the router why would this be the case? Isnt it by virtue that the devices under the router would see the DLNA server?

OpenWRT_USER
@wideopenwest.com

OpenWRT_USER

Anon

Okay. It seemed like you were further along and just needed some notes. I just start from the bottom and hope that helps.

The WOW GW from Arris appears to get only one global IP. It seems it scavenges off VOIP and some [TV handling] ports in its firewall for itself. It then creates a NAT layer 192.168.0.0/24 for the media players and your home. If you had no other switches/routers, then you can just connect everything to WOW at 192.168.0.X. The GW has wifi and 4 eth. ports. All devices would be on one happy private network in that /24, so UPNP and other multicast protocols would be great.

Problem 1. The Arris GW wifi is weak, and not simultaneous dual band. I use 5Ghz for most stuff because it has less distance, so you can't broadcast much over neighbors (or v.v.), and it stays clean. I only have 2.4Ghz on minimal bandwidth for legacy devices and wifi music player while mowing the lawn. So I need my own router.

Problem 2. Somewhere between Arris and WOW, the gateway and media players run into a lot of home office configuration issues. WOW has had to tweak and limit customer access to a lot of GW options to prevent foul ups on the CATV side. This makes some network stuff break (most people won't care). This makes the 192.168.0.0/24 network somewhat exposed, which is not so much a problem for the firmware devices (media boxes), but Windows computers are frequent hacker prey.

[continued]
OpenWRT_USER

OpenWRT_USER

Anon

Solution A: Bridge your router for the physics of better radio, disable the WOW wifi (overlap, noise), but allow the WOW router to handle the network. Disable DHCP, DNS Proxy, and anything global internet. Sorry, you will just have to read Netgear's instructions for this. Hopefully, they have "access point only" in your manual index. Then you connect LAN1 of WOW to either WAN or LAN1 of the router (again, user manual).

It should act as if you just used a switch to multiply your ports. Everyone is happy on 192.168.0.0/24. If your computers each have good antivirus and firewall (not Windows default), then you should be able to configure for this situation. The UPNP ports will be open, but you can configure to only listen each as servers on the local domain (192.168.0.0) only.

Sometimes however this works for everything but multicast, and routers still mishandle that address allocation. DLNA is UPNP multicast type with a client sending to destination 239.255.255.255:1900 UDP searching for a server. Everything that tries to bridge through your wifi just disappears. The media-data is unicast TCP :8200. So if the media player client can FIND IT, you can get it.
OpenWRT_USER

OpenWRT_USER

Anon

Solution B (my own): I continue to use my own router as I always have with just a cable modem. However if I just let it connect to WOW GW without tweaks, then the WOW GW is one NAT and my router is another NAT. Double NAT will break any collaboration tools, skype, and whatever else that is mutual-peer or acts like a "server" at your end.

The DMZ fixes most of this. Any ports not accounted for in reserved forwards (VOIP) or open connections, are immediately tried with the device in the DMZ. This almost removes the first NAT. Your router is almost as if it is standalone on a cable modem.

Step 0: Mess with WOW GW as little as possible.
Step 1: Disable WOW WiFi.
Step 2: Attach Router WAN to WOW GW LAN
Step 3: Allow your router to attach and find its MAC from the DHCP tab-screen.
Step 4: Assign your router MAC permanent IP away from the bottom (192.168.0.50 for example); this allows DHCP 2-49 for the media boxes and whatever.
Step 5: In the Firewal assign your router IP (192.168.0.50) to DMZ. Now for all other purposes, you are as much on the raw internet as possible. Your own network , example 192.168.15.0/24, is isolated from WOW as if it were public WAN, sad.

Note - Above steps are actually on WOW support in some PDF I can't find right now.

Step 6: On your router firewall, open UDP 1900 from 192.168.0.0/24 (IP Range) to itself (device). This allows 239.255.255.255:1900 searches to be accepted from clients in WAN zone 192.168.0.X only.
Step 7: On your router firewall, open TCP 8200 from 192.168.0.0/24 (IP Range) to itself (device). This will be the actual media connection.
Step 8: Make sure to save settings. Reset your router first, wait. Test internet.
Step 9: Reset (pull plug) on a media box. When rebooted you should find ReadyMedia on Netgear or at 192.168.0.50.

Note - Netgear may have configured ReadyMedia DLNA to only listen on the LAN hardware side. Then even though the above Ports are mapped to your router, they just get dumped to nowhere. If you're lucky, then it is listening on all hardware. The firewall holes will allow the connection, if. ***If..., This can be solved with open firmware including minidlna which allows you more flexibility.

Note - This means DLNA is mapped directly to your router. DLNA cannot cross your router. Without magic, you cannot forward the multicast across the NAT of your router (I wasn't clear before). Also, you need a route populated in the WOW GW 192.168.0.1, so a mediaplayer 192.168.0.3 could send pkt's to-and-fro with 192.168.15.09 (WIN 8 machine). Otherwise, your router looks like a terminal point to the gateway. This is what NAT does, it creates a MASKED one to many network assignment. Therefore DLNA on a windows computer (WIN8 MediaPlayer) on the router will not be available to HomeConnect through your router. *** this can be solved also with open firmware, but its an adventure into crazy network management.
OpenWRT_USER

OpenWRT_USER

Anon

WOW link for network setup options:
»www.wowway.com/docs/ultr ··· rted.pdf
mikey32230
join:2015-01-31

mikey32230

Member

said by OpenWRT_USER :

WOW link for network setup options:
»www.wowway.com/docs/ultr ··· rted.pdf

So I currently have the Solution A. That you wrote up, unfortunately when using the router's AP mode other cool features like VPN are unavailable.

With Solution B, I have tried to follow those WOW instructions before, but something ended up not working quite right. I will probably try it again though. Thank you very much for your descriptions and your help

OpenWRT_USER
@wideopenwest.com

OpenWRT_USER

Anon

WOW GW instructions have an error. Assuming your WOW GW is 192.168.0.0/24 and your ROUTER is 192.168.1.0/24, they say set the DMZ to 192.168.1.1. Oops, that is the "inside" of your router network.

Fix your router IP to 192.168.0.50 within WOW GW. Your DMZ from WOW GW needs to be 192.168.0.50. When a unsolicited port is hit from the global internet on WOW GW, it is automatically forwarded to your ROUTER to handle. If this is your VPN server port, then your router will act on it.

Best of luck
lesmikesell
join:2013-06-10
Mount Prospect, IL

lesmikesell to mikey32230

Member

to mikey32230
You may be able to get DLNA from the router itself in routing mode - assuming it works on the WAN side and the firewalling permits it, but with a different LAN subnet behind it you won't see those devices (for example phones that can stream their photos and videos over wifi).