Remote streaming issue?

[tapeworm48]

Again I'm new to this. having trouble streaming this to my work PC. Both server and receiver in this case are running XP. i enter the IP + stream.mp3 in Windows Media Player, and typically it says it cant play the file. I'm confused as to what IP i should be entering. i have one that says 127.x.x.x and another that is 192.xx.xx.xx,

can someone point me to a dummy's guide???
thanks.

[mherger]

> stream.mp3 in Windows Media Player, and typically it says it cant play
> the file. I'm confused as to what IP i should be entering. i have one
> that says 127.x.x.x and another that is 192.xx.xx.xx,

None of these, they're not accessible from the internet. Please follow the
following article from the wiki:

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cg...ectingRemotely

Michael

[tapeworm48]

thanks i was able to find the actual IP and tried that from work, but it didnt work either.

any other suggestions? is this a firewall issue? i tried it both at work and at a friend's house. i have all of the security features turned off.

[Mark Lanctot]

Did you port-forward 9000 TCP and 3483 TCP/UDP in your router?

Are you accessing the IP at port 9000?

Have you allowed SlimServer in/out access through your firewall?

[Eric Seaberg]

Also, make sure you set your transcoding options and limit your bandwidth. I am able to stream at 320kbps to my office, but I do have 1Mb upload capabilites from my house. Start at 128kbps and go up from there until you hit your bandwidth wall.

[tapeworm48]

thanks for the responses. so i tried these last night, and trying to access it from work I get the same error:

Network Error (tcp_error)
A communication error occurred: "Operation timed out"
The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.

And WMP says the server is busy and could not connect to the stream.mp3. My PC is running at home w/ slimserver on.

[robertlewisca]

Well, I can tell you that I just went through this setup process in the last two days, so here goes:

If you don't have a static IP from your internet provider, you will need to get a dynamic dns account from provider like dyndns.com. The account is free, and you can set up a never changing dns address to coincide with your ever-changing dynamic public IP address.

In your router, you need to go to the 'virtual server' section and allow ports 9000 and 3483 on the computer running slimserver to be open.

Also in your router, there may be a section to configure the dynamic dns (as described above). If so, go to that section, select your provider from the dropdown list, enter your username and password, and the dns name you created at the provider.

Make sure you install LAME into SlimServer (information on this is available in the Wiki).

With all that done, you should be able to access your SS remotely by typing http://<your dynamic dns addres>:9000. If you can, you're pretty much there. All that's left is to download Softsqueeze right from your SS (click Help, then Softsqueeze).

Once SoftSqueeze is launched, you should be able to select a second 'Player' from a dropdown list in Slimserver. Then, click on Player Settings, go to the 'Audio' settings, and set up bitrate limiting as described in an earlier post.

Good luck!

[tapeworm48]

robert thanks for the response. i appreciate it. i finally had the chance to try this out.

i will find out tomorrow if it works when i get to the office and try it out.

some notes to clarify my situation and objectives....

HOME
this is where the SB3 is, and its able to communicate to the home PC running slimserver. thats the only software running on that PC

WORK
this is where i want to be able to hear that music. i understand i need to be catching the music through WMP at work under the localhost:9000/stream.mp3 url. do i need to running any other software here? how about webpages to control the music i listen to? softsqueeze?

i setup a dyndns account. thanks for the suggestion.

i setup an account on squeezenetwork and added my player (SB3) to my account.

the correct ports (9000, 3483) are setup, and i've indicated the dyndns info on my router.

what else am i missing? the most confusing part (thus far) has been figuring out what software needs to be running where. i can access SS on my home PC using 127.X.X.X over IE. doubt that will work the same way at work.

thanks in advance robert for your help, as well as others.

[robertlewisca]

Well, you just need to have SlimServer running on your computer at home. The first step in ensuring that you can get to SlimServer from the outside is to go to work, open a browser and type http://<your dyanamic DNS IP>:9000 where <your dynamic DNS IP> is the DNS name you created at dyndns.org. For example, the address might look like this: http://joblow.selfip.net:9000. If typing in the address takes you to your SlimServer web screen, you're all set. Then all you have to do is click on 'Help' from within SlimServer, click on 'Softsqueeze', and download it to your work pc. Then all you would need to do is launch softsqueeze anytime you want to listen to music at work. You don't even need to use WMP.

If you can get all that up and running, then the next thing you might want to consider is security. Once you've got all that figured out, do a search on the forums for 'Hamachi' to learn how you can set all this up using secure VPN access...

[Cessquill]

Did you get this working yet?

To answer some of the other points. Sorry if I've misunderstood, or I'm being patronising, just want to be clear..

- Media Player, Winamp, whatever, at work doesn't want to have localhost in it - that will make it try to find SlimServer on your work machine. As mentioned, you need to point the media player to your home machine.

If you have a fixed IP, then it will be something like http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9000/stream.mp3, where the x's represent your IP address.
If dynamic (likely), as mentioned, you're better off registering with a service that'll constantly monitor your dynamic address and point a fixed address at it (I use www.noip.com). For the purposes of testing, as long as you don't reboot your modem/router, you can get away with using your dynamic IP address for now.

Once that's in, your media player will start playing a continuous MP3 file called Stream. Your SlimServer at home is creating this file on the fly and filling it with whatever music you want. Depending on what media player you're using, you might get track/album information displayed (Winamp does, Windows Media Player doesn't - unless there's a workaround that I haven't found yet).

- You can use your web browser to select what to listen to. Enter the same address into your browser as above, but without the stream.mp3 on the end (so http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9000). This'll let you configure your work player and choose what to listen to.

If you've got more than one player connected to Slimserver, you'll get a dropdown in the top right of the screen. You'll need to select your work IP address before you can choose what music to send to it. If you go into player settings for that IP address, you can give it a more meaningful name.

I don't know whether it's still the case, but Slimserver used to default new players to a 320kbps stream, which might be a bit much for your home's internet connection to handle. This is part of the player settings for each player, and you might need to set it lower for your work's player (or any player that you're accessing remotely, for that matter) so to keep a continuous stream. I've got mine set to 128kbps here at work, and it's good enough quality for here, and doesn't drop out at all.

Point to note is that if you're changing the bit rate, you may need to restart your work player and reconnect to the stream to make sure that it's using the new bit rate.

Finally, you may need to play around with any buffering settings on your media player. For example, if you get the odd occasional drop out in the stream, you could up the buffer a bit. This means that the web interface's playlist will be out of sync with what you're player is playing (mine's always one/two tracks behind), and it takes a little longer to start initially and switch if you change playlists, but you get a more reliable stream.

Just a final note - I've recently been using a media player called Foobar2000 at work. Very small, flexible, and pulls through track info from a slimserver stream.

Hope this is of some help. If not, ignore me