As a general rule, the routers that are manufactured today have a USB port with which you can do very basic things such as charging a smartphone, but also more advanced tasks, for example, making it share multimedia content with computer equipment that works connected to it: smartphones, Smart TVs, game consoles, computers, etc.
All this is achieved by connecting a USB flash drive or external hard drive dedicated to storing photos, songs and videos to said port, so that these contents can be played remotely from any corner of the home.
However, it is not enough to simply connect the storage device to the USB port, it is also necessary to make a few simple adjustments in the settings of the router, either using a mobile browser or a desktop browser. We show them below.
How to share multimedia content from a Huawei router?
Huawei routers that support the media server function include the HG8145V5 and EG8145V5. The steps to follow in both devices are the same.
First of all, enter the configuration panel of your Huawei router. To do this, type the IP address 192.168.100.1 into the address bar of your smartphone or computer browser.
Next, log in by filling in the User Name and Password boxes (if you don’t know this information, find it out from the label printed on the bottom cover of the router. They are usually root and adminHW).
Once you access the configuration screen, click on Advanced and go to Application > Media sharing. Next, check the box next to Enable media sharing and click Apply. Then go to Application > Enable UPnP and click Apply.
Return to the main screen by clicking on the icon represented by a house. Hover over the figure of the router and click on USB. Under USB Home Sharing, check the Enable printer and storage sharing box.
Then close the configuration page of the Huawei router.
How to play the shared media contents from the Huawei router?
This is the easiest step. You can use the network media playback feature of your smart TV, VLC player on Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone, Kodi program on Windows and Android.
Actually, you can use a multitude of applications that support the DLNA/UPnP protocol.