Apple TV

[reggiep]

We have just purchased an apple TV for each department and are in the process of deploying them.

We have had one fail already when deployed. It was working fine for about two hours then it just wouldn't display a thing and its little light just blinks constantly.

Secondly does anybody else find Apple TV really laggy?

Playing film clips from an ipad can jerk and be out of sync and when flipping between apps, sometimes the old app is still on the screen for some time.

We have a pretty good wireless setup here (Ruckus) so I'm pretty sure that's not to blame.

 

Anybody else experiencing this?

[Marci]

On the contrary, bonjour broadcast traffic is rather immense, so the added load on wireless becomes rather large. AppleTVs on wired network rather than wireless will minimise lag etc. Blinky light means it's gone to sleep. If one device fails to access it & wake it up, it will report the fact to other devices (broadcast via bonjour) and the rest will then remove from their contactable list.

 

As per yesterdays post on Apple TVs, refer to Bonjour deployment guide from Cisco etc and translate for your own particular infrastructure to get it all working properly - Bonjour gateways etc.

 

Other handy resources:

Avahi mDNS Gateway - http://avahi.org

Some words on it - http://zerogb.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/avahi-mdns-gateway-configuration-2/

 

For an idea of a single device talking to an AppleTV - Mirroring (via AirParrot as Extended Desktop) my workstation to an AppleTV for a full work day, 8 til 4, produces 7.5Gb of traffic from the workstation to the AppleTV, and currently the mDNSResponder service on my Macbook is responding constantly to 292 servers (Bonjour clients, so AppleTVs / iPhones / iPads on the network) on TCP 443, and UDP 53, 1900, 5351, 5353, and 49000-65535. If my Macbook has been switched off overnight, I have to turn Airplay off and back on again to get the AppleTV to rebroadcast it's presence before the Macbook picks it up. If the Macbook sleeps overnight, then it sees the AppleTV immediately on wake without any further action needed.

 

Recommend you leave the remotes near the AppleTVs, and instruct staff on heading to the Airplay menu in the short-term.

Edited June 21, 2013 by Marci

[dhicks]

We have a pretty good wireless setup here (Ruckus) so I'm pretty sure that's not to blame.

 

AirPlay itself over Ruckus wireless seems to work fine - we've had 4 or 5 iPads all connecting to the one AirServer machine at once, with good performance. That was with the receiving machine wired to the same switch that the wireless access point was connected to, so traffic didn't need to go out past that switch. That was with just the one AirPlay device on the network - as @Marci points out above, it seems that the more of them you have on the network the more traffic you get.