[ipad] AirPlay (AirServer) reliability

[Sibrows]

I'm looking for some advice/experience from people using AirPlay on a large network.

 

We have about 100 teachers using their iPads to show their iPads on screen at the front of the classroom using AirPlay and thus far its been less than reliable. You can have seemingly identical iPads sitting next to each other and one will see 95% of the rooms in the school and the other will on see 5% of the rooms.

 

The background to the network:

• We have the internal network with about 1,000 PC's, Macs, printers and the above mentioned iPads.
  
• The iPads are mostly running iOS7 with about 5% running iOS6.
  
• I am aware of the quite widely documented issue with AirPlay and the connection dropping but this is trying to connect to the machine in the first place.
  
• We are using AirServer instead of Apple TV.
  

 

Longer term I'd like to divide up the network so that the staff iPads and the computer at the front of each classroom exist on their own VLAN as opposed to the large subnet that they are on at the moment.

 

Has anyone else had a simular experience?

Do you think that dividing up the network would help this issue?

[j224]

Our school is much smaller (only 10 classrooms) but we have had similar problems with iPads connecting via AirServer. Sometimes it works great, other times it doesn't pick up the classroom PC.

[Sibrows]

Thanks j224. We've got 70 classrooms all running AirServer. I don't believe its an issue with AirServer but more likely to be an issue with the way in which Apple's Bonjour protocol works i.e. broadcast instead of p2p.

[howartp]

I rolled AirServer out to 100 classrooms just over a week ago, with 130 iPads.

 

I've not had anyone complain about not being able to see them in the way you describe.

 

Are both iPads on the same wifi subnet, on the same WAP?

 

Peter

[Sibrows]

Its good to hear that its working successfully.

 

Are both iPads on the same wifi subnet, on the same WAP?

 

The Staff connect to a wireless network that extends the internal network meaning that the iPads and computers attached to the projectors in the classrooms are on the same subnet. This has the downside that so is everything else and I'm currently thinking that there is likely to be too much other noise on the network that is causing this issue.

[howartp]

The Staff connect to a wireless network that extends the internal network meaning that the iPads and computers attached to the projectors in the classrooms are on the same subnet.

In that case, I can't see any reason why you would struggle.

 

All our issues related to our PCs being on separate VLANs around the site, and our iPads being on another VLAN isolated by the firewall, so I had to bridge the firewall as well as the VLAN links with all necessary AirPlay/Bonjour traffic.

 

We've yet to knowingly see the well-documented feature you mentioned, though we did discover it on AirServer's support site minutes after I had told the staff AirServer was ready to go! My heart sunk when I read it, but nobody has complained yet.

 

Peter

 

Peter

[lmgtfy]

We have AirServer installed in around 50 classrooms and also across VLAN's using Multi-VLAN Airplay with Avahi... | Technology, Music and Everything Else... but I would say I doubt we ever have all 50 using it at anyone time. Because of this I choose to make sure it is not running unless the teacher opens it from the start menu. Airplay, Airprint etc which rely on bonjour is a notorious problem in enterprise networks see this page for more details Education IT Pros Petition Apple To "Fix" Bonjour | Cult of Mac that's why if I can keep the broadcasts to a minimum the better in theory it will work. Also remember for 100 users to be using it at one time you are going to need a decent wireless system as at the end of the day all it is doing is streaming uncompressed video over the network so could use anything up to 3MB/s per user in theory.

[howartp]

Yes, should have said, we do the same with not running AirServer until staff use it.

 

I've told them it's so they don't have to scroll through 100 devices in the Airplay list, but as you say it benefits the network.

 

We use Ruckus v9.7 firmware (which I don't think is on public release yet) to do the VLAN routing.

 

Peter

[Sibrows]

Thanks for all of your feedback. I'll have a look at what else on our network may be contributing to the issues we are experiencing.