How can I share content on my local LAN using my modem's UPnP service?

[jamesepatterson]

I have a Home Hub 2000, which my streaming app detects as a UPnP server. I thought easy - I'll just plug a USB disk drive with some music on it into the modem, and I'll be able to listen to my music collection over my home LAN.

No luck - I've loaded up the USB hard drive with lots of content, but when I open up the server collection using my UPnP app (I use MediaMonkey), nothing, just empty Photo, Song and Video folders.

How can I make this work? If there's a help video or article, I can't find it on the Bell site.

Another small issue - there is actually a control for this on the modem admin page under Advanced tools and settings, but it does nothing. It's always on, even if I toggle it to "Off".

[BellPatricia]

Hi there @jamesepatterson 

Thank you for reaching out to the Bell community 🙂

Can you share which type of USB disk drive you have and which file type it is formatted to support? 

Please also clarify what you mean when you say that UPnP is always on, even if I toggle it to "Off"? For example, does the setting revert bac to ON in the modem GUI after you have changed it? 

If you are still having trouble we recommend following the steps in this support article to see if that makes any difference  How to connect a USB device to my Bell Hub 2000

Let us know how everything is going.

@BellPatricia 

[jamesepatterson]

The USB drive is a Seagate One Touch, 1TB formatted as exFAT (factory formatted).

By "always on", I mean that I can see the modem as an available UPnP server (though always empty) when I browse the network for available streaming sources from my tablet, in this case using my MediaMonkey application, whether the Admin tools page has the UPnP service on or off.

I re-read the "How to Connect" article - yes, my USB hard drive is plugged into one of the USB-A connections on my Home Hub 2000. So, no revelations there. (I missed it when searching for help as it doesn't mention UPnP, just how to access documents on it from Windows).

Also worth noting - I see the same behaviour on my Giga Hub modem at another residence - UPnP shows up as a media server (when no external drive is attached).

[Vanadiel · Accepted solution]

The UPnP server feature should be to allow UPnP for applications on the network to automatically configure port forwarding rules etc...

For the modem to be a media sharing server it should use DLNA.

A few things to check:

• Drive Format: Most hubs support FAT32 and NTFS formats; some users report issues with exFAT or HFS+.

• Drive Label: If \\mynetwork returns an error, you must specify the drive label (e.g., \\mynetwork\DriveName or \\192.168.2.1\DriveName).

• Permissions: Ensure your Windows network setting is set to Private if you encounter permission errors.

[jamesepatterson · Accepted solution]

The exFAT format was the problem. Reformatting it as FAT32 fixed it - Thanks.

I was a bit off on my terminology as well - the streaming service is called DLNA; UPnP is more of a directory service, it seems, used to locate DLNA and other services on the network (I'm not alone - a lot of how-to articles on DLNA seem to use the terms interchangably.

There are in fact toggles in the "Admin tools and settings" page for the modem configuration for both UPnP and DLNA - turning off DLNA works as it should, hiding the DLNA server from my client application as expected. It doesn't, apparently, require UPnP to be seen, at least on my local LAN.

Some help pages or videos would be useful for setting this up, including those critical details like acceptable partition formats. There's no mention of acceptable formats on the   How to connect a USB device to my Bell Hub 2000 page either, just a note saying the USB disk feature is "not supported".