Triax Cast Streaming

Overview

This guide shows how to integrate a TRIAX Cast Streaming Server in your guest network.

Use Case

A hotel wants to allow its guests to use their personal streaming accounts (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, …) to watch movies on the TV in the guests room. To avoid direct connections and the associated security issues, this is done via a streaming server like TRIAX Cast which acts as a proxy server.

Architecture

Only the direct integration of the streaming server in the guest network (Surf-LAN) with disabled client isolation is supported right now. Research has already started, for a version with client isolation and the streaming server placed in Management-LAN.

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Prerequisites

  • An updated IACBOX system is needed to have a new version of our Plug’n’Play engine installed that supports ignoring devices per target IP.
  • Separated VLANs as shown in the TRIAX quick start guide.
  • Intermediate network devices (switches, router) need to allow mDNS broadcasts (broadcast UDP packets sent to 224.0.0.251 on port 5353) as this is used for device discovery by Chromecast.
  • mDNS broadcasts should be isolated per VLAN - no mDNS forwarding between the guest network and the VLAN where the ChromeCast sticks are located.

System settings

  • Turn off client-to-client protection, so that your guest devices can reach the streaming server in the network

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  • Add the streaming servers MAC and IP address to Plug’n’Play -> Ignored Devices.

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TRIAX Cast settings

  • Set both IPs to high IPs out of the IACBOX guest network IP range. If the default network 172.30.0.0/20 is in use, set this for example to 172.30.15.250 for the admin UI and 172.30.15.251 as Proxy IP.

  • The VLAN connected to Chromecast sticks has to be completely separated at the switch, not reaching the IACBOX.

Connecting as guest

The Chromecast stick shows a QR-code with (the following) instructions on the TV screen.

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  1. The guest joins the guest WiFi with his/her device.
  2. The guest scans this QR-Code (which is an HTTP URL pointing to the streaming server) to pair that device with the corresponding Chromecast stick in that room. This ensures, that only the correct stick can be used and guest devices do not “see” dozends of other Chromecast sticks on the network.
  3. An Chromecast capable app can be started (All the well known streaming apps support that.)
  4. Select an video and start streaming.

Technically this works like a remote control for the Chromecast Stick. The actual video stream is downloaded by the Chromecast stick from the chosen platform (Netflix, Amazon, …) with the guests account and played on the stick.