UPNP connectivity between Win7 machines not reliable

dinki · 30 Mar 2010

Hey guys. I am having problems getting UPNP to work reliably on my windows 7 machines. I am running the PlayOn Media Server (PlayOn Digital Media Server | PlayOn) installed on one of my windows 7 machines (my office computer). Firewalls and AV are turned off on both machines. I am able to sometimes view the PlayOn server on the office computer from my home theatre PC (windows 7) but other times it doesn't show up or takes an awful long time to show up. I am using UPNPInspector (UPnP-Inspector - Coherence - a DLNA/UPnP Framework for the Digital Living - Trac) as a means of checking whether the HTPC machine can see the PlayOn Server on the office PC.

I'm using a D-Link DIR-628 router. Both machines are connected via wired ethernet. The router sometimes shows up in the list of UPNP devices but other times it doesn't show up at all. I'm not sure if this indicates anything or not. I have UPNP turned on on the router.

I ran the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool (Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool) on both PCs and both showed that UPNP was supported on both.

This has been puzzling me for quite a long time. Every once in a while, everything works great for a short period of time. Usually, however, the HTPC machine can't even see the PlayOn server on the office PC.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to troubleshoot further?

zigzag3143 · 30 Mar 2010

dinki said:

Hey guys. I am having problems getting UPNP to work reliably on my windows 7 machines. I am running the PlayOn Media Server (PlayOn Digital Media Server | PlayOn) installed on one of my windows 7 machines (my office computer). Firewalls and AV are turned off on both machines. I am able to sometimes view the PlayOn server on the office computer from my home theatre PC (windows 7) but other times it doesn't show up or takes an awful long time to show up. I am using UPNPInspector (UPnP-Inspector - Coherence - a DLNA/UPnP Framework for the Digital Living - Trac) as a means of checking whether the HTPC machine can see the PlayOn Server on the office PC.

I'm using a D-Link DIR-628 router. Both machines are connected via wired ethernet. The router sometimes shows up in the list of UPNP devices but other times it doesn't show up at all. I'm not sure if this indicates anything or not. I have UPNP turned on on the router.

I ran the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool (Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool) on both PCs and both showed that UPNP was supported on both.

This has been puzzling me for quite a long time. Every once in a while, everything works great for a short period of time. Usually, however, the HTPC machine can't even see the PlayOn server on the office PC.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to troubleshoot further?

Are you using homegroup and IPv6? some system have trouble with connectivity and stability using home group. You can verify if that is the problem by setting up a ne network connection using workgroup. if the problem stops you can disable IPv6 and kill homegroup

Good luck

Ken

dinki · 30 Mar 2010

Thanks for the reply Ken.

I'm not sure. I do have a homegroup set up but I don't know anything about IPv6 . How do I go about setting up a workgroup? I've networked machines with win98 and XP but I think win7 set everything up automatically. Thanks again.

*EDIT* I figured out how to turn off homegroup (leave on both machines then stop services) and I disabled IPv6. Same problem. Do I need to reboot after disabling IPv6?

chev65 · 31 Mar 2010

dinki said:

Hey guys. I am having problems getting UPNP to work reliably on my windows 7 machines. I am running the PlayOn Media Server (PlayOn Digital Media Server | PlayOn) installed on one of my windows 7 machines (my office computer). Firewalls and AV are turned off on both machines. I am able to sometimes view the PlayOn server on the office computer from my home theatre PC (windows 7) but other times it doesn't show up or takes an awful long time to show up. I am using UPNPInspector (UPnP-Inspector - Coherence - a DLNA/UPnP Framework for the Digital Living - Trac) as a means of checking whether the HTPC machine can see the PlayOn Server on the office PC.

I'm using a D-Link DIR-628 router. Both machines are connected via wired ethernet. The router sometimes shows up in the list of UPNP devices but other times it doesn't show up at all. I'm not sure if this indicates anything or not. I have UPNP turned on on the router.

I ran the Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool (Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool) on both PCs and both showed that UPNP was supported on both.

This has been puzzling me for quite a long time. Every once in a while, everything works great for a short period of time. Usually, however, the HTPC machine can't even see the PlayOn server on the office PC.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to troubleshoot further?

There is a good chance that one of your AV's or firewalls is causing this problem. Often times just disabling them isn't enough, sometimes you need to uninstall them completely. Homegroups is not causing this problem I can assure you.