plug and play wifi

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the network and establish functional network services for data sharing, communications, and entertainment. UPnP is intended primarily for residential networks without enterprise-class devices.

The UPnP technology was promoted by the UPnP Forum, a computer industry initiative to enable simple and robust connectivity to stand-alone devices and personal computersfrom many different vendors. The Forum consisted of over eight hundred vendors involved in everything from consumer electronics to network computing. Since 2016, all UPnP efforts are now managed by OCF.^[1]

The concept of UPnP is an extension of plug-and-play, a technology for dynamically attaching devices directly to a computer, although UPnP is not directly related to the earlier plug-and-play technology. UPnP devices are "plug-and-play" in that when connected to a network they automatically establish working configurations with other devices.

The UPnP architecture allows device-to-device networking of consumer electronics, mobile devices, personal computers, and networked home appliances. It is a distributed, open architecture protocol based on established standards such as the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP), HTTP, XML, and SOAP. UPnP control points (CPs) are devices which use UPnP protocols to control UPnP controlled devices (CDs).^[2]

The UPnP architecture supports zero configuration networking. A UPnP compatible device from any vendor can dynamically join a network, obtain an IP address, announce its name, advertise or convey its capabilities upon request, and learn about the presence and capabilities of other devices. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) andDomain Name System (DNS) servers are optional and are only used if they are available on the network. Devices can disconnect from the network automatically without leavingstate information.

UPnP was published as a 73-part international standard, ISO/IEC 29341, in December, 2008.^[3][4][5]

Other UPnP features include:

Media and device independence

UPnP technology can run on many media that support IP including Ethernet, FireWire, IR (IrDA), home wiring (G.hn) and RF (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi). No special device driversupport is necessary; common network protocols are used instead.

User interface (UI) Control

Optionally, the UPnP architecture enables devices to present a user interface through a web browser (see Presentation below).

Operating system and programming language independence

Any operating system and any programming language can be used to build UPnP products. UPnP stacks are available for most platforms and operating systems in both closed and open source forms.

Extensibility

Each UPnP product can have device-specific services layered on top of the basic architecture. In addition to combining services defined by UPnP Forum in various ways, vendors can define their own device and service types, and can extend standard devices and services with vendor-defined actions, state variables, data structure elements, and variable values.