Hands On: Broadcast Analysis of UPNP and SSDP Packets

I’ve written many articles on how broadcasts or multicasts can affect performance. I’ve seen as little as 10% broadcast rate cause issues on wireless networks as well as lock up network attached devices.

One of the broadcasts I try to minimize are UPNP and SSDP packets. The methodology used is quite simple, I perform a PC boot up and login baseline.Then I disable UPNP and SSDP and retest the computer. When I’m sure it is not needed, I start a capture with the following capture filter ‘udp port 1900.’The list of addresses in the endpoint report will be my list of devices to clean up.

Just some advice:

-- Always capture after your change for a particular type of device or software to ensure the protocols have been disabled.

-- I have found some devices that require the UPNP server and client to be disabled.

-- Even when you disable these protocols in Windows, an application could either re enable or bring its own UPNP/SSDP protocol.

-- Some applications may have their own version of a discovery protocol like Apple’s Bonjour and Dropbox

Once you get the hang of this you will realize that you can quickly reduce broadcasts and probably find other things to tune.