Awhile ago my Western Digital NAS failed and so I changed to a USB RAID shared via my router. The old NAS had a DLNA Server which seamlessly updated and shared media to Smart TVs. Unfortunately, my router did not provide a DLNA Server so I looked for an alternative router. I was already using a TP-Link range extender and so when I found a TP-Link Archer BE230 which, according to TP-Link documentation, provided a DLNA Server, I thought great, bought a unit and then when through the pain of changing router (pain as there are a lot of devices to work with on my home LAN these days).
After the initial pain, and without the DLNA Serve serving up my media, I decided to reset the BE239 router to factory defaults and carefully document my installation and test at various stages. Second time around was much better. Unfortunately the DLNA Sever continues to disappoint.

To be able to make use of the DLNA Server, I had to change folder names so the file structures containing the media I wanted served up were alphabetically first.

So I change from:

<DIR> PRIVATE

<DIR> PUBLIC

to

<DIR> A_PUBLIC

<DIR> PRIVATE

within A_PUBLIC I changed the directory (folder) names to be:

<DIR> A_Videos

<DIR> B_Music Video

<DIR> C_Music

<DIR> D_Photos

<DIR> E_Audio Books

etc so they were in order of importance (to me) for accessing via the DLNA Server.

In order to get the DLNA Server to update, I had to:

1. Turn off Media Sharing.

2. Delete the files.db file from the .TPDLNA folder.

3. Turn on Media Sharing.

4. Wait for the new files.db file to be created (and complete updating).

I am using:

Firmware Version: 1.1.4 Build 20250318 rel.31873(4555)

Hardware Version Archer BE230 v1.0

There seem to be a couple of basic problems with the DLNA Server:

1. It seems to have a (low) limit on the number of files it can deal with, and

2. It does not automatically update when files are added or deleted,

I suggest the following to address these problems:

1. Remove the limit on the number of files (or time limit to build) for the DLNA Server,

2. Allow a folder to be selected so that the DLNA Server is not having to deal with unnecessary files/folders eg in the above, I would choose to share only “PUBLIC” via the DLNA Server (not “PRIVATE”).

3. For the short term, add a “Refresh” button to refresh the DLNA database (not delete and re-create from scratch but validate the existing files/folders and update as necessary).

4. For the longer term, make the re-fresh automatic.