Enabling Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) can improve the overall networking experience through automatic discovery and device interoperability. UPnP helps devices, such as Internet appliances and computers, access the network and connect to other devices as needed. UPnP devices can automatically discover the services from other registered UPnP devices on the network.

By default, UPnP is disabled. When disabled, the router will not allow any device to automatically control the resources of the router; for example, port forwarding. When enabled, you must set the Advertisement Period and the Advertisement Time to Live according to the following criteria:

Advertisement Period. Determines how often the router will advertise (broadcast) its UPnP information. This value can range from 1 to 1440 minutes. The default period is 30 minutes. Shorter durations will ensure that control points have current device status, but this can create additional network traffic. Longer durations may compromise the freshness of the device status but can significantly reduce network traffic.

Advertisement Time To Live. The time to live for the advertisement is measured in hops (steps) for each UPnP packet sent. A hop is the number of steps allowed to propagate for each UPnP advertisement before it disappears. The number of hops can range from 1 to 255. The default value for the advertisement time to live is 4 hops, which should be fine for most home networks. If you notice that some devices are not being updated or reached correctly, then it may be necessary to increase this value a little.

The UPnP Portmap Table shows IP addresses and other settings of UPnP devices that have accessed this wireless gateway. These settings are described in the following Portmap table.

Table 7-1. UPnP Portmap Table settings
Settings	Description
Active	Yes or No indicates whether or not the port of the UPnP device that established a connection is currently active.
Protocol	The network protocol (for example, HTTP, FTP, etc.) that the device is using to connect to this wireless gateway.
Int. Port (Internal Port)	Which, if any, internal ports are opened by the UPnP device.
Ext. Port (External Port)	Which, if any, external ports are opened by the UPnP device.
IP Address	The IP address of the UPnP device that is accessing this gateway.

Select Security from the main menu and UPnP from the submenu. The UPnP screen will display.

Enable the UPnP radio by selecting the Yes radio box.

Modify the default Advertisement Period and Advertisement Time to Live settings, if desired. The defaults are 30 minutes and 4 hops, respectively.

Click Apply to save the new settings. Devices attached to the router can now use the router resources.

Click Refresh to update the Portmap table to show active ports currently opened by UPnP devices.