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Recently, two of my friends just bought a new D-Link router to replace their old one. After installing the new routers, both of them were experiencing problems with their MSN Messenger. They were not able to sign in and send messages. After testing different configurations in the router, it was determined that the problem was related to UPnP. If UPnP is turned off in the router, then MSN Messenger is working fine. If UPnP is turned on, then the problem comes back again.

Searching on D-Link’s website, you would be able to find in its FAQ regarding the use of MSN Messenger with D-Link router and UPnP. They have documented a step-by-step tutorial on how to setup Windows XP properly to work with UPnP. You can find the tutorial here.

What is UPnP?

So what is UPnP? UPnP stands for Universal Plug and Play. In short, UPnP is a technology to simplify the networking of devices on a home and business network. Some network applications doesn’t work well with Network Address Translation (NAT) behind a router to share a public IP address with other applications on the network. UPnP comes in here to automatically configures the settings so that the network application can function properly behind the router. MSN Messenger is one of those applications that doesn’t work well with NAT by default. Because UPnP is not configured in Windows XP, therefore when you plug in a UPnP enabled router to your network, MSN Messenger may encounter problems like not able to sign in and not able to send messages.

So if you are having problem with your MSN Messenger behind a router, then you may want to check the UPnP settings in Windows as well as in your router.