Remote access to B3 upnp(?)

[whollybastard]

Hi,
been lurking these forums for a long time, always finding great stuff and solutions but alas, not for this one(?). There's an old thread on how people are accessing their music collection away from home and I've been looking at options to do this.
What I'm looking to do is to be able to stream (primarily) music from my B3 to my Android phone, I'd also like to be able to dl using the same app (to minimise data traffic). There are plenty of options to do either, or both using a combination of apps but nothing great (e.g DAAP streamer, FTP, MPD...). So... candidates;
- Subsonic - appears to offer all functionality but requires both Java and Subsonic to be installed
- Mediatomb - from what I can tell, what prevents Mediatomb from being accessible from outside is that its set to the br0 interface. Haven't tried messing around with the config yet.

A Upnp solution is preferred since I could use the same app at home as away and, at least with something such as BubbleUpnp for Android, downloading is available in app.

So, cutting it short, if I wanted to change the interface setting of Mediatomb to include eth0, without rippling effect to other service - what would need to be done? And would that suffice to access Mediatomb from outside or are there other parameters to consider?

Or simpler, easier better options available - i.e. go with Subsonic?
Any and all input is much appreciated.

[Ubi]

I do not understand the problem you have with br0, as it bridges (afaik) the ethernet LAN with the wifi, which seems exactly the connection you need for streaming media. Can you elaborate on this?

[whollybastard]

I want to access the Upnp server over WAN. I.e. not connect through 192.168.10.1:upnpport but through externalip:port and (prematurely?) arrived at the conclusion that the reason it will not connect (no response from server having specified a port in the config.xml, opened the port in B3 and restarted) is that the interface is specified to br0 which only includes LAN and wifi.

[Ubi]

So you want to open your streaming service to the entire world over uPnP. This is not the most secure setup, but of course technically possible. I guess the manufacturer did not foresee this setup when they decided (wisely IMO) to bind uPnP services to internal connections only. This may indeed mean you need to alter the source code of the scripts to allow you to do so.

[whollybastard]

Well, the entire world isn't the idea, I'd like to have some bandwith left over to myself. User accounts and passwords would have to be setup too, which should be possible to simply add to the config.xml. Don't see that it's conceptually much different from being able to access FTP or DAAP from anywhere in the world pretty much out of the box by enabling said services/opening relevant ports.
Don't know if it would require source code changes to turn off upnp ssdp or if it could be supressed some other way, e.g. done through the config. Would have to look into that.
Question is still if someone has tried anything like this on their B3, or if people are using Subsonic/other solutions and recommend that as opposed to going down this road.

[Gordon]

I don't think UPnP is designed for this. AFAIK the core functionality of UPnP is that servers broadcast their presence and such broadcasts will not pass any router. If therefore you could point it towards WAN it could only possibly work within the same network as your public IP belongs to (as defined by the netmask) but will most likely be subject to filtering at intermediate levels - e.g. I've never seen a Windows machine publish itself on the net.

[whollybastard]

Tried setting another interface over the weekend with little success. So I surrendered and installed Java and ended up installing BubbleUPnP server on the B3. Subsonic may be an option but from what I can see, I wouldn't be able to browse by Genre which is a must. Secondly, I can continue to use the BubbleUPnP at home to control music on xbmc and other devices. Will give it a go over the coming month or so to see how it works out but so far so good.

[Gordon]

Had to look that one up. So essentially you're now tunnelling UPnP through HTTP - that should work all right.

[Ubi]

just out of interest, but why on earth is such a lowlevel service running on top of java?

[Gordon]

just out of interest, but why on earth is such a lowlevel service running on top of java?

Platform independency?