I’ve seen a lot of threads out there on 2Wire and Slingbox internet connection pains and I agree it’s a royal pain in the ass. Connecting my Slingbox to my old Linksys router that I had just gotten rid of was a piece of cake. This post is not code related but this experience was such a pain, I decided to hopefully help others by posting my experience here and really tell you how to set this up with full details which I did not find out on the net or at Slingbox.com.
First though, it's amazing to me how many examples out there from others do not give the complete story or at least specifics on screen shots to save people a tremendous amount of pain when trying to deal with Slingbox and 2Wire when trying to setup the Internet connection between the two. Since the UI from A&T is so disorganized and has such weird non-standard labels for things, it makes it hard to understand how to get Slingbox working with this.
My Rant: Also, I see a lot of threads in the Slingbox forums with people who HAVE gotten this to work but they leave out like 2-3 very important steps or explanation on how you actually have to get this set up. These things are easy but often times should NOT be implied so do not leave these steps out…I’m here to fill in those gaps in this setup. And hey, pictures mean a thousand words…so include print screens of your configurations at times because it may help someone out rather than a one-line sentence replying on “how to set this up”.
2Wire Firewall Setup
Now, here's the #1 step that most everyone misses on your 2Wire router firewall configuration, and which causes so much pain if missed or misunderstood:
1) Before adding the UDP settings for SlingBox to your 2Wire Firewall: change the dropdown in step 1 in 2Wire's Firewall Settings to "Slingbox". Yea it's weird, because it says "Select A Computer", when SlingBox is really a host. I think AT&T needs to be more specific, the devices are not always computers. So one would not think to check that out or change it if you're assuming hey, it's already selected my main PC as the host.
So once you have selected Slingbox as the Host (what AT&T labels everything as “Computer”), here’s the rest that I’m sure you’ve seen but not in this much detail.
Let me first say that I have not found that the requirement for adding a UDP port forward is necessary. All you need to do is add the application called “Slingbox” which should show up in the list of “All Applications” in the list box. However, for the sake of argument I’m still going to show how to add that UDF port forward anyway.
So since you’ve selected the right host in step 1, now you can add a UDP port forward setting:
2) In the 2Wire Firewall | Firewall Settings section, Click on the "Add new use-defined application" link:
3) We are going to add a port forward using UDP to Slingbox (what AT&T has foolishly put in a bucket called “Computers”):
So, Add a name like “Slingbox1” (something other than “Slingbox” since it’s being used as the host already)
Then make sure you select UDP and specify 5001 for the
4) Now click back. Next step is to add the new UDP forwarding to our “Slingbox Computer”, or in other words without AT&T’s poor labels “Slingbox Host”
So on the left in the applications list, add Slingbox1 to the list and click Done
5) Now add the default “Slingbox” application that I talked. Again I have gotten this to work only by adding the default Slingbox application that shows up in this list and I never had to perform steps 2-4 above
In the “All Applications” list, scroll down and select “Slingbox” and add it to the right. Then click “Done”.
6) Looking at my Slingbox firewall details in 2Wire I had this (shows Slingbox not Slingbox1 since I personally did not need UDP as stated):
If you were to add the UDP, you’d see this:
Slingbox Player Network/Internet Setup
I found a few really weird things I had to do to get this to also work on my side. However normally Slingbox has been a very smooth experience otherwise. At the time of this post I was using Slingbox v.2.0.0.465
Here are the steps I took:
1) Open Sling Player and launch the “Setup Assistant”. Go right to the “Setup Internet Viewing” section.
2) Just click Next and let it search for your 2Wire router:
3) Now the kicker for me was this. It finds your router, then naturally asks you to log in. But no matter if I was inputting the right login (and yes, I tested this), it would not take it. So I ultimately just selected to bypass this the login altogether:
4) Next, I specified my router model. And here’s kicker #2. In order to click next, I had to click the dumb “Go” button. All this button does is bring up some tutorial that tells you how to set up a router and opens up a URL in your browser. But if I did not do this, then I was not able to click next (common Slingbox, that’s kind of odd UI design wouldn’t you say?):
5) Walla, it finds my damn router finally! yes, a royal pain in the ass as compared to the smooth experiences I’ve had in the past with my Linksys router.
Just a side note: Another pain is that if you’ve never logged into 2Wire router website for the first time on your home PC, remember that the admin username and password for the site is going to be probably your login one that you setup with SBC regardless if this is an open out of the box router/modem. I switched from a Linksys router to 2Wire and I was trying to use a default admin password when in fact it still looks for your old SBC account. For example, to log into my router’s website, I was trying username: Admin pwd:Admin when in fact I still needed to enter my old username@sbcglobal.net and related password.
Please Digg if this helped you.
