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I have roamed around the Internet and on this site for a little bit and I don't seem to be able to find a descriptive and practical description or discussion of the Advertisement Period or Hops settings in UPNP. All I seem to find online in discussions going back to 2003 is the canned few sentences that "describe" what these settings are.
What is affected by these settings? What does one see when these settings are changed? When would you change these settings? What kind of issues on the your LAN point to these settings as something that should be investigated?
I have 5 hard wired connections over wireline and another 5 devices connected over 2g and 5g wireless. Video streaming can happen randomly over 3 or 4 of any of these connections at any time.
i would appreciate any enlightenment on this issue!
The advertisement time is there to inform clients the maximum time a device's services will be available. A device that may come and go quickly may want to use a shorter advertisement time so that clients quickly time out information about the device, while more permanent devices may use a longer advertisement time. The rationale is to save network bandwidth by sending fewer advertisements, but given network speeds today, this really isn't a problem any more. Don't worry about these settings. The defaults are fine and changing them isn't going to make one whit of difference.
They're described in the manual (link). There should be no reason to change the Hops settings. The Advertisement interval is tied to the duration of each entry in the portmap table.
those two entries in the manual are word for word all that I can find about those two parameters on the entire internet. I'm sure that there is some technical stuff in a UPNP spec somewhere. But I'm looking for a description/discussion that would have "if you do this then you will experience that" kind of info. How do I find and evaluate the port information you mentioned? Back in prehistoric days (the 1990's) I was a serious support tech so I'm not afraid to wade into stuff like this but I do need some guidance.
You can find the UPnP 1.1 Device Architecture Spec here (link). The link goes directly to the section on Advertisements. If discusses the merits of making it shorter and longer.
Yikes... When I said I figured it was in a detailed spec somewhere I was being facetious!
OK..... From what I read my confusion now stems from the fact that the description seems to say that the parameters should be set by the client devices - not at the router. It says that the advertisement period should be longer for a client that sits on the network for a long continuous time, and shorter for a quicker in and out type of device. What did I miss?
The terminology in the spec is different than what we are accustomed to. In the spec, "devices" provide services and "control points" use them. So, routers are "devices" and client devices are "control points".
Hmmmm..... On page 21 it calls a cell phone an example of a short term device....
What don't I get here? Throughout the spec it references short term and long term 'devices' in ways that imply media streamers, cell phones, servers etc. would be devices with different connection times, from short term ad-hoc connections to a class with long term to permanent connections.
The upside of this discussion is that at the end of it I hope to understand the whole concept better. I was really looking for a cookbook style description of advertisement and hops but being a rusty tech this will help me get it a little better. I still don't get it yet.....
The advertisement time is there to inform clients the maximum time a device's services will be available. A device that may come and go quickly may want to use a shorter advertisement time so that clients quickly time out information about the device, while more permanent devices may use a longer advertisement time. The rationale is to save network bandwidth by sending fewer advertisements, but given network speeds today, this really isn't a problem any more. Don't worry about these settings. The defaults are fine and changing them isn't going to make one whit of difference.
