Another Newbie Project: Tivo from work!

[Tony]

Hiya fellow Newbies,

What I am about to relate will strike most Tivo users as so strikingly obvious and trivial as to be barely worth mentioning at all. This is for the rest of us .

You probably know you can access your Tivo via your web browser at home (by entering the Tivo's IP into the browser's address bar). This is much easier if your Tivo has a static IP (search OzTivo to do that if you're currently using DHCP).

Its really easy to go one better and access it from anywhere. Its cool to be able to schedule recordings from work, or you could sink the ultimate geeky freethrow by operating your Tivo from a mobile device... it works pretty well from my Treo 650 phone, for example.

To do this you need to access the administration pages of your ADSL router (probably located at xxx.xxx.xxx.1 on your network, where the x's are your subnet... so if my Tivo's address is 192.168.0.10, the ADSL router admin page is probably accessible at 192.168.0.1). This needs to be done from inside the local network, rather than from another location via the internet.

Pop in your admin login and password... if you have never changed it the defaults might be "admin" and "admin" (in which case you really ought to change them to something better!).

Look for an option for Virtual Servers (might be under Security or similar). Look for an option like "Add". Setup External Port Start and External Port End to "8080", set Internal Port Start and Internal Port End to "80", Protocol to "TCP" and "Server IP Address" to your Tivo's address. Click "add" and you're away.

OK, now you need to know your ADSL connection's external IP address. You can find out by simply pointing your browser (from inside your LAN) to http://whatsmyip.org.

If you're with a nice ISP (ie. NOT Xtra) you'll probably have a static IP address that never or rarely changes... for example, mine at Orcon has been stable for years. If you are with Xtra you could buy your own domain name and subscribe to one of those dynamicDNS services... or, better still, switch now before you are assimilated!

Anyway, now that you have your external IP, just enter it from any web browser anywhere, adding ":8080" at the end (so if your IP is 84.27.120.74 enter "84.27.120.74:8080")... and there's your TivoWebPlus!

VERY soon you'll wonder how you ever lived without it...

Cheers,

Tony

[Tony]

Hi all,

I would add to this post that opening your Tivo the the big bad internet in this way creates potential security risks, should someone out there come across it and decide you need a Season Pass to "The View" or something (yes, real sadism still exists!!!).

I haven't had any problems, but would be interetsed to know if anyone has implemented security features, like password protection on WebTivo or a Tivo software firewall.

Personally I've shifted the external port off 80 to create some slight obscurity to very casual probing... probably pointless I agree.

Cheers,

Tony

[thomson]

would be interetsed to know if anyone has implemented security features, like password protection on WebTivo or a Tivo software firewall.

TivoWeb and TivoWebPlus both have a username/password authentication mechanism. The later versions of TWP will (by default) ask for authentication when connected to from a remote machine (one which does not look like it is attached to the local network). Have a look in your tivoweb.cfg file for some configuration options (some help can be found here).

Personally I've shifted the external port off 80 to create some slight obscurity to very casual probing... probably pointless I agree.

Shifting or doing a translation from the standard port 80 is a really good idea as it will avoid the majority of common probes.

[neilp]

Hiya fellow Newbies,

OK, now you need to know your ADSL connection's external IP address. You can find out by simply pointing your browser (from inside your LAN) to http://whatsmyip.org.

Actually you can go one better, go and visit http://www.no-ip.com and set yourself up with a virtual domain name (this is free to do). Download their client and run it up on a PC and pretty soon you will be able to get to your Tivo via a hostname rather than an IP address, eg

http://tonystivo.redirectme.net:8080

or similar. This URL will never change even if your ISP rolls the ADSL routers IP address.

The no-ip client constantly checks your ADSL router's IP address and updates no-ip's database as and when it changes (often when you reboot the ADSL router or restart the DSL connection).

It will resolve your virtual domain name to your ADSL router's IP address and keep it current. Works a charm. The only thing is that you need to have a system running the update client from time to time.

Now, there is a Linux client on their site. It would make a whole lot of sense to run that on some device which is always on and always connected to your network... like a tivo maybe...??

I haven't got that working yet but I'd kind of like to - anyone managed it yet?

Neil.

[Darren King]

Download their client and run it up on a PC

No need for a PC too. Most modern modems/routers have the popular dynamic DNS providers inbuilt so you can put your details in there.

..... or better still you could use the TiVo version: http://forums.oztivo.net/showthread.php?t=859

[MattCallow]

No need for a PC too. Most modern modems/routers have the popular dynamic DNS providers inbuilt so you can put your details in there.

As long as the router works properly! I use mine (a belkin F1PI241EGau ) with dyndns, at sometimes it fails to update.

..... or better still you could use the TiVo version: http://forums.oztivo.net/showthread.php?t=859

Ah, now there's an idea. Maybe I'll get myself a no-ip account and try the tivo client (unless there is already a dyndns tivo client?)