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I'm working on a trivia game that is similar to buzztime that you might play at Buffalo Wild Wings. To play the game, your smartphone connects to a Java applet that is running a TV version of the game, and then you can press "a" "b" "c" or "d" to answer a question shown on the TV.

In the environment that we will be playing this game in, the computer that is displaying the questions on the TV won't be directly accessible via a public ip address because it is connected to what is essentially a router.

I don't really know much about how UPnP works. What do we have to do to get the phone to be able to communicate either over TCP or UDP to the TV computer, and vice versa?

ertemplin
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  • Are the phones on the same network as the PC? If not, I would just use [port forwarding](http://portforward.com/help/portforwarding.htm) to make the PC accessible via public IP. If they are on the same network, you can just connect using the local IP address of the PC. – drew010 Mar 21 '12 at 02:25
  • phones can be on mobile network or wifi. I don't want to restrict that. – ertemplin Mar 23 '12 at 03:46
  • Ok, then the port forward should be all you need. If they can connect to a special local wifi network the server was on, then you could do a lot more in terms of network communication through an app; but you can still probably do everything you need over https through a public address. – drew010 Mar 23 '12 at 05:42
  • That's why I was asking about upnp, because I don't have access to configure the network for the TV. – ertemplin Mar 24 '12 at 16:30

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UPnP is not necessary. Assuming you have a WiFi gateway (not just an access point), it already contains a DHCP server that will provide local (probably 192.168.x.x) addresses to all devices. Whatever app you run on the phones (to display the choices and accept user input) would need to know how to connect to the server. For that you could use a local hostname and add it to your DNS proxy (that is likely also on the router).

Jim Garrison
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