Accessing tracks over internet

[steveblaott]

I would like to configure my list of "watched media folders" to include a folder on a remote home lan that would be accessed over the internet, i.e. so I can stream music from somebody else's library.

The owner of the other lan would presumably have to set set up port forwarding to allow access to his nas from the internet.

Is this likely to work?

What else would we need to do to make it work?

[steveblaott]

Re: Accessing tracks over internet

The only way I have found to accomplish this is by 'mounting' the remote folder in my Linux Asset server, i.e. as though it is a local directory, using the Linux sshfs command.
This requires the owner of the remote system to a)configure their drive to permit sftp access to their NAS drive...b)create a login user id / password for you...and c)create a port forward entry in their router to pass port 22 to the NAS drive containing the folder.
Once all that is done you create a directory on the Asset Linux system to be associated to the remote system folder, and just issue the sshfs command from the Asset Linux, supplying the ip of the remote system, user id/password and name of your local directory.
sshfs basically uses ssh/ftp to create a connection between the two servers and make it look like the remote folder is actually local.

Then of course you have to add the remote folder to the list in the Asset configuration, and have Asset rescan to pick up the tracks.
Once all this is done successfully, it actually works well...i.e. when using my upnp client (Cambridge Connect) the remote albums are fully integrated with my local library, and play just as well.

There are a couple of flaws though:
Sometimes the connection is dropped (e.g. if the internet connection goes down at either end) and you have to then reissue the sshfs command and have Asset rescan as well.
Also it is a bit of a security hole for the other system because of the port forwarding.

Another way of achieving the same thing is not to use Asset at all.
Plex media server actually supports remote sharing out of the box just using upnp...no ssh or port forwarding required.
It is a bit slow in my client compared to Asset and the album art doesn.t show up from the remote system...but Plex doesn't have either of the flaws mentioned above.

I'm testing both concurrently, haven't decided which to stick with.