Streaming Media in Windows 7 – network settings

One useful bit of information that we’ve not yet discussed is how to configure your network for streaming from Windows 7 over the Internet.  The configuration is really simple, but it can depend on what type of router you have on your home network (the router is the device that shares your internet connection around your house, probably via WiFi).

[Edit: You shouldn’t need to make these changes, network streaming uses a newer version of IP (IPv6) and something called Toredo tunnelling to enable remote streaming.  You will need what’s described next if anyone providing the connection back to the home PC is blocking IPv6 for some reason as IPv4 is used as a backup method of connection]

The first thing to bear in mind is that Windows 7 makes use of a feature of most modern routers called uPnP (or universal plug and play) that allows other devices on the network to make changes to the configuration of the router.  In this case Windows 7 attempts to open a couple of ports automatically to allow the remote PC to connect to the PC in your home to stream the media.  Some people prefer to turn off uPnP because of security fears.  In that case you’ll have to manually open the correct ports on your router.

1. First we need to workout which ports to setup, so launch Windows Media Player and select Stream > Allow Internet access to home media… then select Diagnose connections then select the link for Port forwarding information and make a note of the port numbers.  In my case they are 44505 and 10245.
2. Open up the web configuration interface of your router, normally (http://192.168.0.1)
3. Find the option for “Port mapping” or NAT and add two ports
4. Add two “rules” to open 44505 and to map it to the name of your Windows 7 PC that holds the media and also add a rule to map port 443 to port 10245.

Hopefully, if you are having problems that’s one reason out the way as to why.

Posted by Simon May, follow me on Twitter or if you like email me