LAN FAQ

No. For LAN-only setups Sunshine (on the gaming PC) and Moonlight (on the client device) are enough — no temstream management portal required. The management portal only earns its place in cross-network / public-internet setups: when machines are not on the same subnet, or when you want to remote home from the public internet — that's when you deploy the portal and have Sunshine sync the device list up to it. If you only need LAN: install Sunshine + Moonlight and follow the four-step tutorial above. Add the management portal, ZeroTier or Tailscale later if you need to extend beyond the LAN.

Work through these in order — most issues are resolved by step 3: 1. Ping each other: from the client device, ping the Sunshine host's LAN IP. If the ping fails, the two ends aren't on the same reachable subnet — usually because the router has guest network / AP isolation / client isolation turned on. Move both ends onto the same primary network and try again. 2. Password is correct: the access password on Moonlight's login page has to match the one set in Sunshine's configuration page exactly (watch case, spaces, and any stray characters from copy-paste). Forgot it? Reset it in Sunshine's configuration page. 3. Sunshine is running: the tray icon is there. Sunshine / SunshineSvc processes are present in Task Manager. If everything above checks out and it still won't connect, look at: - Did the gaming PC's IP change? DHCP renewal can hand it a new address, and the IP in Moonlight's login page is now stale. Bind a fixed IP and the problem goes away. - Is Windows Defender or a third-party AV blocking Sunshine / Moonlight? Whitelist both programs and open UDP+TCP ports 47984-48010. - Is the gaming PC asleep? Wake it, or disable sleep in power settings.

Strongly recommended. DHCP renewal can change the gaming PC's IP at any time — and the IP you typed into Moonlight's login page now points to nothing. A fixed IP guarantees the address you put into Moonlight always resolves to the right machine. Both approaches work: Router side (preferred): log in to the router admin, find "DHCP reservation / static lease", bind the gaming PC's MAC to a free IP (for example 192.168.1.20), restart the router. Windows side (fallback): Control Panel → Network and Sharing Center → adapter settings → IPv4 → "Use the following IP address". Fill in IP / subnet mask / gateway / DNS. Be careful — a wrong value means no network on that PC at all. Router-side is safer.

LAN has no internet bandwidth cap; the only limits are hardware at both ends and the router. Practical ceilings: - Gigabit wired + common 1080p display: 4K HDR @ 60fps / 150 Mbps is fine; 1080p @ 120fps is easy. - Gigabit wired + 4K display: push the panel's native resolution + 120fps; 150–200 Mbps. - 5GHz Wi-Fi with strong signal: 1080p @ 60fps / 80 Mbps is comfortable; 4K often stutters. - 2.4GHz Wi-Fi or long distance: 720p / ≤ 30 Mbps. Smoothness wins over sharpness.

No. This is an important security point: - On LAN: traffic stays inside the subnet. No router configuration is needed. Rule of thumb: opening Sunshine on a LAN does not require touching the router. If someone asks you to forward ports on the router, they're describing a public-internet setup — use the WAN solution, not the LAN one.

On LAN, "stutter" almost always comes from one of three places: 1. Wireless signal swings: 5GHz attenuates sharply with distance and obstacles. Wiring the gaming PC, or moving the client closer to the router, usually fixes it immediately. 2. Host resource exhaustion: large file copies, video encoding, many browser tabs — all make CPU/GPU oscillate. Stop them first. Pragmatic order: try wired first, kill background jobs. Most LAN streams return to their normal quality after these two checks.

Two paths: Wake from the client: enable Wake-on-LAN in Sunshine's Configuration → General, and allow Wake-on-LAN in the BIOS and NIC properties (Windows disables this by default — flip "Allow this device to wake the computer"). Moonlight's support is limited; in practice you usually need a separate WOL tool. Don't sleep at all: Power Options → "Choose what the power buttons do" → uncheck "Turn on fast startup" / set "Sleep" to "Never". This is the simplest route for a home gaming PC that's always on. For power-saving on the go, prefer Sunshine's Idle Shutdown (auto-off after N minutes). Don't combine with WOL — when the PC wakes unexpectedly, every client will immediately raise "Host Offline".

temstream is fully open source, but some security products — especially those with "application hardening" features — flag Sunshine's Virtual Display Driver and ViGEmBus as suspicious. Steps: 1. In AV / Windows Security → Protection history, restore Sunshine, ViGEmBus and the Virtual Display Driver, and allow them. 2. Whitelist Sunshine.exe, SunshineSvc.exe, VirtualDisplayDriver.exe, vigembus.dll, plus Moonlight.exe on Windows clients. 3. In Windows Defender Firewall → Inbound Rules, add two rules allowing UDP+TCP ports 47984–48010, scoped to "Private" networks only. 4. Restart the Sunshine service and try again. If it still blocks, consider switching AV — false positives are common in gaming scenarios, and many community users end up relying on Windows Defender plus a manual whitelist, which is the most stable combination.

Multi-user configuration is not supported on LAN: Sunshine cannot be configured with multiple user accounts on a single host — only a single user is available. However, the same user account can be used across multiple Moonlight clients at once: on each client, open Moonlight's login page and type in the same gaming PC LAN IP + the same access password — one Sunshine host happily answers several logins at once. Whether the multi-client experience stays smooth depends on the gaming PC's hardware — CPU/GPU get squeezed when multiple 4K sessions run side by side. A wired gigabit link plus a separate VLAN or enterprise AP on the router keeps two 4K streams from fighting for bandwidth. Note: a single Moonlight client cannot open two sessions to the same Sunshine host — multiple instances on the same client only see its previous session. Stagger usage.