Universal Plug and Play

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that allows networked devices, such as computers, 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.

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 computers from many different vendors. The Forum consisted of over eight hundred vendors involved in everything from consumer electronics to network computing.