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View Full Version : Possible solution to cross-subnet video transfers...


Maeglin
12-05-2006, 07:00 PM
...but I need some help in testing it.

Over the last week I've been working on a way to forward TiVo beacon and Multicast DNS packets across subnets in a complex home network (mine has 3 subnets, so I guess this proves necessity is the mother of invention :) ). I finally have something resembling a finished product, and it does forward packets properly (TiVo Desktop has shown that it can see the TiVo), but I can't do any testing beyond that until the S3 has video transfer capabilities and even a thorough test is impossible without a second box.

What I'm here asking is if anyone has such a setup or can set something like that up, and has any interest in testing this thing out. The program was developed on Linux, but should work with most Unix-ish machines (I've made the source code as portable as I can). The test scenarios I'd need tested would involve a transfer-capable S2 on either side of a router (on different subnets) and a computer on one side running TiVo Desktop. If, using the program, transfer between any two of them (a total of 6 possibilities to test) becomes possible, I'd consider it a success.

I've already tested the Multicast DNS side pretty thoroughly (I have a Roku SoundBridge as well which is pretty darned picky when it comes to that), so you wouldn't need to worry about that. I'd just need to see if transfers actually work if things can see each others TiVo discovery beacons.

If anyone can and will try this out, and help me get the testing done that I need to do before an official release, let me know and I'll PM a download link.

Thanks!

cheer
12-08-2006, 09:36 AM
As a network guy, I am curious as to how you accomplished this. Is your application basically receiving the broadcasts and turning them into unicasts, or...?

I thought about trying to do this by just putting a Cisco router between the two subnets and doing UDP forwarding via ip helper-address, but I just haven't gotten around to messing with it.

Maeglin
12-08-2006, 02:18 PM
On the TiVo beacon side, yeah. That's the only way to preserve the source IP address without also causing a loop.

Maeglin
02-12-2007, 03:36 PM
It's out of the bag now:
http://www.smittyware.com/linux/tivobridge/

I still haven't managed to get anyone to confirm that it allows video transfers across subnets, but I can confirm that it does what it's designed to do (TiVo Desktop sees my S3, the S3 sees Galleon, and my SoundBridge sees the music server on my Linux box). If anyone can confirm that transfers work, though, please let me know.