Support Center » Knowledgebase » EyeTV for iPhone / iPad Troubleshooting: Manual Port Forwarding Setup
 EyeTV for iPhone / iPad Troubleshooting: Manual Port Forwarding Setup
Solution Using EyeTV's iPhone Access feature (known as Wi-Fi Access in EyeTV 3.1.2 and below), it is possible to access your EyeTV content remotely over the internet, instead of only from your home network.

Usually, you would use the My EyeTV service to accomplish this goal. That's available in EyeTV 3.2 and above. See this article for more information:

How do I use My EyeTV with the iPhone/iPad?

However, Back to My EyeTV may not work in every case. The alternative steps require some understanding of home networking, and using a 3rd party Dynamic Domain Name Service, and is therefore not officially supported through our technical support.

Setting up remote access for iPhone Access recordings, without using My EyeTV, requires three separate steps:

1) Enabling iPhone Access for local use.
2) Configuring your home network for port forwarding.
3) Utilizing a DynDNS service to access your home network via a standard URL (address and port).


Enabling iPhone Access


iPhone Access is a feature in EyeTV that allows you to access EyeTV from an iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.  In addition, you can also access your recordings via a web browser, after they have been converted to a compact H.264 video file suitable for streaming.

To enable iPhone Access with EyeTV, then use How do I use My EyeTV with the iPhone/iPad?

For software older than EyeTV 3.2, you can use the article How do I use Wi-Fi Access?


Configuring Your Home For Port Forwarding


Network data is sent to a particular IP address which specifies a computer or device, and a specific port which designates the particular application or process that the data belongs to. The iPhone Access process utilizes port 2170, which is why the address includes the characters ":2170/eyetv/" somewhere within the address.




Any remote request for iPhone Access recordings needs to be sent along this same port. But, since the IP addresses on your home network can change, it is recommended that you assign port forwarding rules from your home router that assign all traffic destined to a particular port to get sent to a particular computer on your network. In this case, you would send all traffic for port 2170 to the computer that is running EyeTV with iPhone Access enabled.

For an Apple Airport Base station, you must first configure your Mac running EyeTV with iPhone Access to use a static IP address, then set up a "Port Mapping" rule from the Airport Admin utility. The result is that whenever there is traffic directed toward port 2170, it will be forwarded to the specified computer running the iPhone Access service. Details regarding this can be found in the Apple Knowledge Base article, "Directing network traffic to a specific computer on your network."

For most other routers, you can access the Port Forwarding options from the router's administration web page. Please refer to your router's documentation for instructions on how to access administrative settings.


Utilizing a DynDNS Service To Access Your Home Network Via A Standard URL


Once you have port forwarding configured for your home network, it is recommended that you use a Dynamic Domain Name Service so that you can use a convenient URL to communicate with your home network remotely. Your Internet Service Provider assigns your home network a public IP address. You could use this IP address to remotely access your Wi-Fi Access server, but depending on how your Internet Service Provider operates, this IP address may change on a daily, weekly, or other regular basis. Most ISP can provide you a "static IP" (one that does not change) as an additional service.

To solve the problem of a constantly changing IP address, free services like Dynamic Network Services (http://www.dyndns.com/) can provide a dynamic naming service so that you can always connect to your home network using a convenient URL, such as "http://myawesomestuff.dyndns.org". Your iPhone Access address would then be "http://myawesomestuff.dyndns.org:2170/eyetv/". Dynamic DNS services accomplish this by running a small client application that periodically updates your public IP address with the Dynamic DNS service so that the URL always resolves to your home network.

Once your port forwarding and DynDNS service has been configured, you should be able to access your iPhone Access recordings remotely over the internet from any computer or device with an internet browser, and H.264 video playback support. By default, this will enable access for anyone with your URL to access the contents of your iPhone Access server. To restrict access to your content, you may wish to enable the "Require Passcode" feature for "iPhone Access" under the EyeTV Preferences > iPhone > More Options...




This will require any client attempting to access your Wi-Fi Access service to authenticate using a Username of "eyetv", and whatever password you designate. To enable password protection, click on the "Change Passcode..." button and enter the password of your choice.


Adding Your Mac via the iPhone or iPad


If you want to add your Mac using a specific IP address and port, then follow this process:

1) Press the Edit button at the top right corner of the menu.




2) Select "Add EyeTV"





3) Press the "Advanced" button at the bottom of the screen.





4) Choose a name for this connection, and the enter the IP Address or Domain Name (DNS), along with the port. If you are using DynDNS, then enter that address. Then press Save.




4) Your Mac will appear in the list.



Live TV vs. Recordings when using iPhone Access


Recordings can be accessed via the EyeTV for iPhone/iPad app, or via a web browser. That includes the Safari browser on an iPhone.

Live TV can only be accessed via the EyeTV for iPhone/iPad app - a web browser cannot access Live TV at this time.

If your web browser can use Bonjour to find services, then that is an easy way to access the older, Wi-Fi Access HTML page, for access to recordings on your Mac. That older interface is still available when using EyeTV 3.2.




Article Details
Article ID: 3572
Created On: 16 Jun 2009 05:13 PM

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