Print

Print


Ryan,

We also have a few AppleTV's and have experienced the same thing you
have. I talked to ATS and the fact that the bonjour service and zeroconf
broadcasts to find compatible devices is what is likely stopping this
from working. The broadcast traffic is blocked on the wireless network.
This was something that ATS was going to talk about at  higher level.
Allowing this kind of traffic across the wireless network could
negatively impact the network for all users and enabling it on the
wireless network is an all or nothing kind of deal from what I
understood.  Allowing or disallowing broadcast traffic was not possible
per SSID like you can do with port selection, as I suggested possibly an
SSID for Airplay if it were to be used throughout campus.  

 

I think at this point it's best to setup your own small network in the
conference rooms, and to contact ATS to find a channel that you can use
on the that won't cause conflict with their AP's.  Otherwise, if enough
people were interested in this feature of airplay, it may be of use to
contact ATS again regarding this.  For now, we're not using airplay, but
in the future think it would be beneficial, particularly in the teaching
environments and conference rooms as you've described.

 

Kevin

 

Kevin Floyd

Network Services

Health Information Technology

Michigan State University

517-432-5144

[log in to unmask] 

 

 

From: Ryan M. Finn [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 11:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MSUNAG] Apple TV

 

"Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war".

 

All Apple haters, prepare thyselves...

 

 

In RHS we have purchased a couple of Apple TVs.  We were playing around
with them to see if Airplay Mirroring might be a useful addition to our
conference room toolset (seeing as how everyone in our division is
buying iPads with or without our consent/knowledge).

 

For those who aren't aware, Airplay allows iPad and iPhone users to
stream audio and video from their device to the Apple TV.  Airplay
Mirroring allows users of iPad 2 or iPhone 4S to stream their display
(and any audio/video) to the Apple TV and display it on the connected
monitor/TV.

 

Anyway, Apple being a big fan of the "it's magic; don't question it"
approach to life, the instructions with the Apple TV read a little
something like "plug it in and your iPad will sense the disturbance in
the force".  And it does; The Airplay icon just magically appears on
your iPad and disappears when you disconnect/cannot talk to the Apple
TV.  This is all really cool until you try to use it and it doesn't work
as expected, and then you have no idea what's up.

 

What we KNOW:

1)      If we set up an access point serving DHCP (not connected to the
campus network) and join an iPad and the Apple TV to it, the force is
strong and Airplay Mirroring works.

2)      If we set up the iPad and the Apple TV on the campus network
(registered DHCP for both), the force is weak and Airplay Mirroring
fails.

a.       Everything else on the Apple TV (YouTube, Netflix, etc.) seems
to work just fine on registered DHCP.

3)      If we use the wired Ethernet on the Apple TV and place it on
either DHCP or a static address (the results are the same), the force is
weak and Airplay Mirroring fails.

4)      The ports used by the Apple TV are listed in the following Apple
article: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2463.  More information about
Apple ports in general can be found in this article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1629

 

What we THINK we know:

1)      We THINK Airplay uses port 7000 and Airplay Mirroring uses port
7100.  This information was found on a third-party website where they
were attempting to hack the Apple TV in general, and Airplay Mirroring
specifically.  The following link is where we found this information:
http://www.aorensoftware.com/blog/2011/08/20/exploring-airplay-mirroring
-internals/.  Note that those two ports are not listed in the Apple
documentation.  They may be in another article I haven't found, though.

2)      We THINK the Apple TV is using Bonjour to broadcast its
existence on the network.

3)      We THINK our issues are centered around using Bonjour on the
campus network.

 

 

So... Are we on the right track and is there anything we can do about
it?  We can make a fully functional setup by using our own access point
and attaching it to the campus network, but we expect that solution
would not be palatable to ATS.  I'm wide open to suggestions on things
to test.

 

Thanks,

 

Ryan M. Finn

Systems Administrator

Residential and Hospitality Services

Michigan State University