[3G Part 2] Make your router forward traffic to your Squeezebox-Server

Part 1 showed you how to make SqueezePlayer knock on the doors of your router. Unfortunately routers are very picky: typically noone is allowed to get in, as the main task of routers is to protect your Home Network from the Big Bad Internet.

That’s why we need to tell your router:

– it should allow SqueezePlayers traffic to come in
– and route it directly to your Squeezebox Server

If you read the first part you might remember me talking about moving targets.
Also the Squeezebox-Servers IP address is changing in most setups. Typically not very fast, but once a month or on a restart it’s not uncommon with some routers.

So let’s cope with this first!
All modern routers are able to assign static (i.e. never changing) IP addresses to the devices of your network – if you just tell them.

The magic word you have to search for on your routers web interface is ‘DHCP reservation’. Here you can enter devices and configure their static IP. When this is done it might look similar like on my router:

You see I have some more devices on my network. This table is actually very easy to read.
A device  is typically identified by it’s ‘MAC address’ – and then the router is just told what IP address to give this device.

Where to get these values from?
The MAC address of your Squeezebox-Server is the hardest. But there are good tutorials out there and I love this one as it has a lot of screenshots.
As IP just take the one your server is having right now: if you have connected SqueezePlayer via WiFi it will show you the IP in the ‘server’ field.

Now that your router is always having the same address, here comes the easy part: tell your router to forward all traffic from an outside SqueezePlayer to your server.

Search the webpages of your router until your find a section ‘Port Forwarding’.
You need to forward port 9000 and 3483 (both TCP) to the IP of your server.

Typically this is done by configuring two rules on your router, here is how the page looks on my router as a reference:

Done!

If you did everything right, SqueezePlayer should now be showing ‘Connected’ when using 3G.
Also mp3s should be playing fine already – if you have a FLAC library we need to do some more steps.

Please continue reading Part 3. We opened your Network to the outside world – and you should setup at least the bare minimum of security!

6 Responses to “[3G Part 2] Make your router forward traffic to your Squeezebox-Server”

  1. Rich Says:

    This works, as long as I control playback through the SqueezeBox Server’s web interface and keep Squeeze Player on the introduction screen (with the Playback and Start App buttons). When I attempt to control playback on the phone (by pressing Start App), the app keeps attempting to refresh the list of players, eventually erroring out with “Your player was not found. We cant detect a Wi-Fi connection. Please check to make sure your network is running and available.”

  2. stefan Says:

    Hi Richard,

    I guess you are using Logitechs free App. Unfortunately it is not able to connect remotely to your server (and thus SqueezePlayer).
    If you use the App SqueezeCommander this will work, as you can add your server via the remote dyndns URL.

    Also the free SqueezeControl App should be able to handle remote connection, but personally I don’t like it as much as SqueezeCommander.

  3. JamesD Says:

    Yeah it looks like SqueezeDroid won’t work remotely even though SqueezePlayer is connected. Also, it looks like the free player of SqueezeControl is dead. So is SqueezeCommander the only way to go now?

  4. stefan Says:

    SqueezeCommander is the best remote control around, so just spend the author his bear and gone will be all your possible problem 🙂

  5. Gio Pinzon Says:

    Hi,
    Over the weekend I purchased both squeeze player & commander apps to extend media server to another room of the house on the cheap. It works as long as I keep the computer on that has media server on it. How can I set up the router to allow squeeze player to work withought leaving the computer on 24-7. I have squeeze box duet & squeeze box radio which work independently withought having a computer on. Please advice your help will be greatly appreciated.
    Thank You,
    Gio Pinzon

  6. stefan Says:

    As written on the AppStore description, SqueezePlayer requires a local Squeezebox Server to be running.
    Your Duet + Radio seem to be using Logitechs MySqueezebox.com service.

    I third party App is not allowed to directly access this service for obvious reasons.
    If you send me your order number to support(at)squeezeplayer.com I’m able to refund your purchase.