UPnP is a technology for automatically connecting heterogeneous devices and offers the following features:
- Automatic address configuration through Auto-IP or DHCP
- Automatic discovery and automatic sign-off of devices
- Self-explanatory description of device features through XML
- Triggering of actions on devices through SOAP messages
- Receiving of events when the state of a device has changed.
The UPnP-standard is maintained by the UPnP-Consortium. On the Web site http://www.upnp.org you can find the documents that are necessary for developing custom UPnP-compatible devices.
At the time being, UPnP is mainly used in the area of multimedia for connecting media such as photos, music and videos (over a media service) with the right playback devices.
But UPnP is able to do more than merely connecting AV devices. It is suited for making all IP-capable devices accessible on a network in a universally usable form. The range of devices includes sensors or actuators but also virtual devices that e.g. retrieve weather information from the Internet and act as UPnP-compatible temperature sensor in a network.
Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS has been working for many years in the domain of home networks. The present Java-based UPnP-stack is highly standards compliant. It contains diverse extensions that e.g. allow connecting various local UPnP networks over the Internet, secure devices against unauthorized access or increase scalability for many devices.
It is published under the GNU General Public License Version 3.
http://upnp.fokus.fraunhofer.de
Copyright (C) Fraunhofer FOKUS, 2011 http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de