JRMC19/JRemote: Remotely accessing music

[tseipel]

Hello,

 

At one point I had read of a method for accessing one's JRMC library remotely using JRemote. I currently have both applications, with my music stored on a 16TB WD EX4 NAS and transmitted to my Windows 7 server over a 5.0GHz 802.11ac connection administered by an ASUS RT-AC66 router. I have an iPhone 5 with an unlimited data plan and LTE connectivity.

 

As I see it, being able to use JRemote as my mobile client beats the heck out of manually transferring ALAC files to my phone through iTunes. As such, any insight (and/or detailed instructions) into how I might configure any or all of the aforementioned components would be truly appreciated.

 

Best regards,

Tim

[Paul R]

You need to do three things -

 

(1) Open a port (NAT) in your firewall to the JRMC Server. The "standard" port is 52199.

 

(2) Determine the outside address of your firewall. (That is, the address that can be pinged from the internet.)

 

(2) Go into Jremote connection settings, and put the outside address of your internet firewall in the 'Global Access" area.

 

At that point, you are pretty much ready to go. When you are at home on your local LAN, it will access the JRMC server via your home network. When the home network is not available, it will go over the internet and do it's thing.

 

You might need to setup some streaming options, such as choosing whether or not to transcode. If you are always sending ALAC, you are good. If however, you were to try and send an AIFF file, you would need to transcode it to 320kbs MP3.

 

That's about it. Pretty simple.

 

-Paul

[tseipel]

Paul,

 

Thanks so much. I will have a go of it when I get home from work tonight (10PM CST) and let you know how I did. If you have any other thoughts/suggestions in the interim, please feel free to post.

 

Thanks again,

Tim

[Skeptic]

(2) Determine the outside address of your firewall. (That is, the address that can be pinged from the internet.)

 

(2) Go into Jremote connection settings, and put the outside address of your internet firewall in the 'Global Access" area.

If you use an access key rather than an IP address to connect to your server, it should be able to connect wherever you are, as it will find your machine via JRiver's servers.

Then you don't have to worry about your WAN IP changing and being unable to connect.

 

I would also suggest that if you are opening up your firewall to allow outside access, that you enable authentication in the Media Network configuration inside JRiver.

[Paul R]

I don't think that works with the outside address, since the JRMC instance knows nothing about that address. It is just an IP held in the JRemote configuration.

-Paul

 

 

If you use an access key rather than an IP address to connect to your server, it should be able to connect wherever you are, as it will find your machine via JRiver's servers.

Then you don't have to worry about your WAN IP changing and being unable to connect.

 

I would also suggest that if you are opening up your firewall to allow outside access, that you enable authentication in the Media Network configuration inside JRiver.

[Skeptic]

I don't think that works with the outside address, since the JRMC instance knows nothing about that address. It is just an IP held in the JRemote configuration.

An Access Key is not only used the first time you set up the connection.

 

If you use an Access Key to connect to the server rather than an IP, it should look up the WAN IP for your server if you're trying to connect from outside your local network.

 

If you set up the connection using an IP address instead of an Access Key, it won't be able to connect if your WAN address changes.

With a DSL connection, mine sometimes changes several times a week.

[Paul R]

This is interesting. I have the JRMC servers setup with an access key, but JREmote cannot access them from outside my network unless I have the outside IP entered as the alternate. Since I have static IPs, there should be no problem with them changing.

 

I will test again. Perhaps something is different with your setup than mine.

An Access Key is not only used the first time you set up the connection.

 

If you use an Access Key to connect to the server rather than an IP, it should look up the WAN IP for your server if you're trying to connect from outside your local network.

 

If you set up the connection using an IP address instead of an Access Key, it won't be able to connect if your WAN address changes.

With a DSL connection, mine sometimes changes several times a week.

[tseipel]

Hi Paul,

 

So I finally had time to fiddle with JRemote. Unfortunately, I am still unable to remotely connect to my music server. Thus far, I opened port 52199 on my JRMC server (W7 32-bit) using the new rule wizard in Windows Firewall. That server is connected to my home network and the internet via an ASUS RT-AC66U router. Do I need to open a port on the router as well? Is it necessary to open a port on the JRMC W7 machine? Do I need to do anything else in JRemote? I currently connect to JRMC using an access key, rather than the IP address.

 

Thanks as always for your input.

 

Tim

[Paul R]

Hi Paul,

 

So I finally had time to fiddle with JRemote. Unfortunately, I am still unable to remotely connect to my music server. Thus far, I opened port 52199 on my JRMC server (W7 32-bit) using the new rule wizard in Windows Firewall. That server is connected to my home network and the internet via an ASUS RT-AC66U router. Do I need to open a port on the router as well? Is it necessary to open a port on the JRMC W7 machine? Do I need to do anything else in JRemote? I currently connect to JRMC using an access key, rather than the IP address.

 

Thanks as always for your input.

 

Tim

 

 

Hi Tom - yes, you need to open the same port on your router. I personally put the router's IP address into Jremote as well, but you may ir may not need to do that.

[tseipel]

Thanks Paul. I'll give that a try.

 

Tim

[DaQi]

This all assumes you have a static IP address. If you don't have a static IP address you will need to setup an external dynamic IP address. Luckily the ASUS router has that capability in it although you will need to connect through an ASUS website. It is relatively straightforward but is an added complication. Not sure that JRemote will be able to find that using a key but am interested to hear if it works because if it does I am going to do the same thing.

[tseipel]

As you suspected DaQi, no joy connecting JRemote thus far. I've opened 52199 on the music server and port forwarded the router on the same port.

 

Could you expound on the process for setting up a dynamic IP address on The ASUS. I'm trying to connect to a Windows 7 server using JRemote v3.0 (iOS).

 

Thanks,

Tim

[Paul R]

This all assumes you have a static IP address. If you don't have a static IP address you will need to setup an external dynamic IP address. Luckily the ASUS router has that capability in it although you will need to connect through an ASUS website. It is relatively straightforward but is an added complication. Not sure that JRemote will be able to find that using a key but am interested to hear if it works because if it does I am going to do the same thing.

 

I am not sure why that would be an issue, most dynamic IP addresses don't change very often, and yes, it does work with the access key. Listening on my iPhone from work right now in fact.

 

Regardless, your external IP address should not have changed that quickly, and you should have at least been able to test connect to it. How did you test it?

 

If dynamic IP addressing is a problem, you can probably use the ASUS website or NOIP.com to solve the issue. Not sure how or where the "access key" in JRiver is storing the public IP address, but it does seem to work well here.

[DaQi]

It was a while ago that I did the dynamic IP thing on my Asus router. As I recall I pretty much followed the directions and it worked. You then use a specific website address to access your network. I did it to open up a port for an application on my NAS not for audio streaming purposes but the process should be the same.

[jriver]

This all assumes you have a static IP address. If you don't have a static IP address you will need to setup an external dynamic IP address.

 

The Access Key method works with outside addresses that change. It keeps track of the changes on a server at JRiver.

 

This might be useful in solving problems:

Network Access - JRiverWiki

 

Note that the router needs to be set to forward packets to the machine running MC's server. This port is usually 52199.

[DaQi]

Yes, read the link and it does seem possible. Something to fiddle with this weekend.