VPNing TiVo's

[DAccardi]

Is it possible to make a VPN to get lets say my brothers TiVo in my home network thru VPN and thereby making it possible to do MRV over the net? Town to town?

[maharg18]

The Tivos must all be on the same account, so no, that would not work. If they were on the same account, then I guess in theory a VPN would make it work.

[Adam1115]

No, the TiVo's use a network broadcast to discover other TiVo's which typically wouldn't go across a VPN.

Cisco addresses this in Routers with a concept called a 'helper address', but I don't think many VPN routers would handle this.

But, that asside, even if you got past that, and put both TiVo's on the same account, MRV is bad enough on a 100 Mbit wired lan, I don't think it would be as useful as you might think. I can imagine it taking 6-8 hours to transfer a half hour show. Remember, it's only going to go as fast as your UPLOAD speed, which is typically VERY slow!

[DAccardi]

Thanks, good point also on the up speed, something I didn't even consider.

[kdmorse]

Yes, you can, but you essentially need to get both networks into the same broadcast domain. A standard routed VPN will not work. Nor will any translation scheme (such as mapping all the addresses on the remote subnet into a range on your local subnet) to my knowledge. But it can be done with a bridging vpn, if both networks are in the same subnet, and on the same account.

But performance wise, it's nearly pointless. I moved a half hour SD show in about 10 hours. May have to find a couple of people with 20/20 FIOS and try again some day....

-Ken

[DAccardi]

Thanks guys for very informative information.