Wifi and firewall

For IT departments that want to place players in a company network. A practical checklist.

Bandwidth requirements

Use case	Recommended download
Static content only (images, templates)	5 Mbps
With 1080p video	10 Mbps
With 4K video	25 Mbps

Upload bandwidth on the player is irrelevant: the player receives content and only sends small heartbeats.

Ports

Open outbound on the player:

TCP 443 (HTTPS) for all content downloads and API calls
TCP/UDP 443 (WSS) for real-time commands from the CMS

Inbound does not need to be open. The player starts all connections itself.

URLs to let through the firewall

Whitelist these hosts:

*.gibeon.io               CMS, API, auth, database, media and websocket commands
*.bunnycdn.com            video CDN
*.b-cdn.net               video content delivery
play.google.com           Play Store updates (only for a Play Store installation)
android.googleapis.com    Android system updates

For the gibeon.io player kiosk box there are also endpoints for remote management. You receive those endpoints together with the devices.

Captive portals: not supported

Hotel networks, guest wifi and some company networks require a browser login per device. A player has no browser and cannot get through a captive portal.

Fix: provide a fixed SSID + password without a portal page, or put the player on a MAC address whitelist on the network.

VPNs and proxies

A player works fine behind a VPN if it is transparent. A proxy with SSL inspection breaks the TLS connection and must be excluded for the hosts above.

Static IP

Not required, but handy for support: with an offline notification you can find the device in the switch faster.

If the network is fully locked down

We do not want to whitelist *.bunnycdn.com: is there an alternative

On request we can set up a private CDN route for a tenant through a specific subdomain of cdn.gibeon.io. Email [email protected] with your network context.

An MDM blocks the wifi credentials

Some company MDMs prevent external devices from remembering wifi passwords. For the gibeon.io player this always works because the device sits outside your internal MDM. For BYOD Android devices that are in an MDM: ask IT for an exception, or use a separate signage network.

Can several players work together on little bandwidth

Yes. Players cache aggressively. Once content is downloaded, it stays local. Four players with the same playlist download the files once each and never again (unless the content changes).

Next step

Troubleshooting an offline player

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