Help setting up Airserver in school

[SciTeach]

Morning all.

Our IT department are struggling to set up Airplay to allow our teacher ipads to link with the desktops in classrooms. Although I can get the app to work fine at home, the Airplay icon does not appear on the ipad once Airserver is installed on the PC at school. I know there are a host of other programs that need to be installed too, and have passed this on the IT. They are using wifi dongles on the PCs to ensure both are on the same network. If anyone has successfully managed to set this up in a school, I'd really appreciate your advice. We have contacted Airserver support, but not heard back yet.

Thanks very much.

[strawberry]

Dear Mr Teacher.

I'm sure you tech is doing a great job, perhaps you would like to direct them to this forum themselves though?. There is nothing worse than when someone else interferes with your work and the fact you said you've got it working fine at home already suggests that you don't truly grasp what your tech is doing ( I can cook at home, it doesn't mean i'm Gordon Ramsey). There are a million questions we will need to ask to sort out the problem ( I wish it were only a case of pressing F12 )

 

I don't wish to seem unwelcoming but its akin to the situation when little Jonny comes into school and tells you that his dad "does" science and tells you how to do your job ( because its so easy of course) . It won't endear you to your ICT team at all I'm afraid no matter how good your intentions.

Edited October 8, 2014 by strawberry

[dhicks]

Our IT department are struggling to set up Airplay to allow our teacher ipads to link with the desktops in classrooms. Although I can get the app to work fine at home, the Airplay icon does not appear on the ipad once Airserver is installed on the PC at school. I know there are a host of other programs that need to be installed too, and have passed this on the IT. They are using wifi dongles on the PCs to ensure both are on the same network.

 

AirPlay (the protocol used between the iPad and Apple TVs / AirServer / etc) uses Bonjour to announce itself on the network - basically, any AirServer machine will be periodically transmitting a whole-network "I'm here!" message. You need to install Bonjour and Bonjour Print Servces on each AirServer machine - MSI install files are available from Apple's website. You'll need to make sure client firewall settings are set to allow Bonjour, too. It's the kind of thing that works well on a home network but can possibly get out of hand if you have multiple devices on a larger network, although people here are reporting 40 devices on a single network with no problems.

[SciTeach]

Thanks to both strawberry and dhicks for your replies. I totally appreciate your point strawberry and I will indeed pass on the details of this website to our IT guy. He has asked me to research a solution to the problem (he is setting it up primarily for me, not as a whole-school initiative), so you're right, I was only trying to help, but it would be better if he was involved directly. The reason I mentioned that I have it working at home was because I know there have been issues in the past with versions of iOS not being compatible, which clearly isn't the case with our ipads. We have installed Bonjour, Bonjour Print Services and the other necessary programs listed on the AirServer website. The Airplay icon does appear briefly, but only for 10-15s, after which it disconnects. Anyway, I appreciate your time replying and sorry if I have not asked an appropriate question. Google doesn't always seem to provide helpful answers!

[strawberry]

Super

 

Other thing to check is which wireless your using, Check that the pings between devices are consistent and then maybe look at the fact that bonjour might be blocked somewhere.

 

I'm slightly confused by the fact your using wireless dongles, It should work so long as its on the same network regardless of connection type ( wired, or wireless).

[Ant]

We had a similar issue here with Airserver and our iPads. The solution for us was to disable Multicast Filtering (IGMP) on the switch our APs were plugged into. (HP Procurve switches with Ruckus wireless.) Our other switches all have this enabled without any issues.

[caffrey]

look into avahi if your network is segmented into vlans Edited October 8, 2014 by caffrey