- The WAN Bridge & HTTP Gateway in the Cling Workbench -
- -- The Cling Workbench features an HTTP Gateway, so you can access all your UPnP devices - with a webbrowser, either while you are at home or even remotely. The HTTP interface is RESTful and - utilizes XHTML, thus enabling HATEOAS and easy - programmatic client access. (It's not "pretty" for humans.) -
- -- Furthermore, the WAN Bridge maintains a durable live connection between two LANs, typically - over a WAN. Endpoint connection management is implemented with RESTful HTTP interfaces. In other words, - you can discover and control your friends UPnP devices over the public Internet, and they - can discover and control yours. Devices from a remote LAN appear on your LAN and they act like they are - connected directly on your LAN. (At this time GENA eventing is not supported and subscriptions - to bridged remote devices will result in an error.) -
- - - -
- The following screenshot shows the WAN Bridge configuration panel in the Cling Workbench with
- two connected endpoints. The local Workbench is connected to two other Workbench instances.
- In the background you see a proxy MediaServer
device from one of the
- connected endpoints:
-
- If available, the Workbench can create a NAT port mapping on your router and discover the - external IP address automatically. After starting the bridge you may access the local URL with - your webbrowser immediately, or send it to a friend who also has a running bridge. One of you will - then create the link by entering and connecting to the other's URL. It doesn't matter who sends - the URL and who creates the link, all UPnP devices from one LAN will be visible on the other LAN, - respectively. Either side may disconnect the link at any time. -
- -- All communication by default is in clear-text with plain HTTP, no HTTPS or other protocols. Security - is based on an authentication key embedded in the URL and all HTTP messages between two bridge - endpoints. -
- -Starting the bridge from the command-line
- -- The extra package - cling-workbench-bridge-cli.jar provides a command-line version of the WAN Bridge. You can start it directly - from your shell: -
- - - -
- The options are the LAN interface for binding the HTTP gateway (192.168.0.123) and
- the WAN-reachable hostname and port, which will be send to other endpoints for connecting.
- The optional -demo
argument can be provided to start a demo Binary Light device on
- the UPnP stack that runs the bridge, this helps with testing.
-
- Security is also based on an authentication key, so you have to watch the startup log messages of the - bridge for the generated key: -
- - - -
- No port mapping on your NAT router will be created, you have to ensure that the configured WAN
- hostname and port is reachable and mapped to the LAN host (and same port) on which the HTTP gateway
- is bound. Open the local URL in your webbrowser to test this. Then access the minimal interface for
- bridge link management with http://my.wan.hostname.and.port:8123/link?auth=[key]
.
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