Internet Gateway Device Protocol
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) comes with a solution for Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal.
Internet Gateway Device (IGD) protocol is embeded in some internet routers. It makes possible for applications to automatically configure NAT routing.
Applications including Peer-to-peer, multi-player gaming, remote assistance needs a way to communicate through home or business network gateways. This issue is classically resolved by configuring routers manually, but involves a good understanding of networks technology. Another classical solution is adding a specific NAT traversal solution for popular applications, but prove impossible to scale to many applications.
IGD provides the main following methods:
- Learning public IP address
- Enumerating existing port mappings
- Adding and removing port mappings
- Assigning lease times to mappings
See also
- Universal Plug and Play
- Network Address Translation
- STUN: Simple Traversal of UDP over NATs