Remote iTunes Sharing

As everyone probably knows, Apple's iTunes app used to provide users with the ability to share their music library over the internet using a networking tool called Rendezvous. However, several releases ago, Apple removed this feature and restricted library sharing to your PC's local network only (probably after pressure from the recording industry). This was very useful to me, because I have a large amount of music on my PC at home that I would like to be able to access at work. Note that you can still share your iTunes library with other users running iTunes on your local subnet, but that doesn't do me any good.

I was still able to remotely access the songs using RendezvousProxy on the PC at work, but when I moved everything over to our new PC at home, it stopped working. As best I can figure, the problem is related to a change Microsoft made to the TCP/IP multicast code in Windows XP SP2 (see here). It seems, however, that this problem only affects machines with more than one network interface (which our new home PC has).

Well, I finally figured out a way to make it work again. For all of the gory details, see these pages, but here is the basic outline of what you need to do:

• Share your iTunes library on your "home" PC.
• Open both the Rendezvous (3689) and SSH (22) ports on your firewall or router, if you have one.
• Install OpenSSH for Windows on your home PC and make sure that it is running.

Now on your "work" PC, do the following:

• Establish an SSH tunnel to your home PC using this tool (I know...the page is in German, but the actual app is in English). Configure it according to these instructions.
• Install RendezvousProxy; again configure it according to these instructions.
• Fire up iTunes. Your home iTunes share should appear in the list now.

Ah...music at work once again! Props to everyone at the other end of those links for figuring this stuff out.