Andrew Mason wrote:
> Hi guys,
> I am trying to find out some information on uPnP ,
> specifically on Linux but everything I come across is geared towards
> dynamic configuration of devices via uPnP.
>
> As far as I understand it, uPnP is a competing protocol to mDNS with
> much better support for Windows machines ? So in theory this should
> allow me to advertise a service for a machine and have it discovered
> on a windows network regardless of the IP address that it is
> assigned.
>
> What I would like to do is expose http as a service on the network
> without having to know what IP address is given to it.
>
> For example on the new mactel machines that use mDNS you give the box
> a hostname (i.e bobsmachine) . and you can type bobsmachine.local into
> safari and if you have an http server running on bobsmachine then it
> will serve up pages etc.....
>
> Now i basically want to do the same thing with uPnP so that windows
> machines can do the same.
>
> Is this possible or am I miss understanding what uPnP is for?
> Can anyone direct me to documentation showing how i would go about
> doing this or how i would create a profile that would mimic this
> behaviour ?
Your basic understanding about UPnP is correct. You also benefit from
reasonable UPnP support on Windows via native libraries, etc. However,
what is probably missing from the puzzle (not 100% sure) is Internet
Explorer or another component of Microsoft's net support having built in
logic to perform UPnP discovery. I suspect you'll need to write a
Windows based client to perform this. If a separate component is needed
it may not satisfy your goals. The example of mDNS and Safari works
because Safari has the discovery built in, I suspect that's not true
with IE, but as I say, you'll have to dig a little deeper for a
definitive answer on that exact issue.
There are plenty of examples of setting up UPnP on the web. Microsoft
also has decent documentation in their SDK. The SDK has example code as
well, including the source to a nifty little applet which lets you
browse and list UPnP devices and services.
FWIW I in the past I've coded up a UPnP device running on Linux and a
Windows client which discovers it and uses it's service. So that part is
definately doable. I'm pretty sure others have done similar things with
UPnP media servers. The specific example of IE performing UPnP discovery
is less clear to me.
HTH,
--
John Dennis <jdennis@xxxxxxxxxx>
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