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
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