1:1 Devices - Network Setup/Segregation

[Tefters]

Any 1:1 schools or mass Apple schools out there able to give any insight on whether they have any network segmentation when it comes to devices. Purely just interested in simple network/vlan configuration.

 

Having spoken with a few suppliers they were unable to give me any decent information or Apple guidance other than Wifi settings etc... which I already know.

 

My current strategy is:

 

88 Apple TV's in classrooms on 1 VLAN/Subnet

400 iPads on 1 VLAN/Subnet

 

I've read plenty of articles from large state schools in America saying they had problems with Apple TV's and Airplay when 10+ devices were used at the same time and ended up VLAN/Subnetting out devices into smaller chunks however suppliers seem clueless when I ask them so i'm potentially looking at the simple setup above and then evaluate as I go but was curious to see what others have done in similar scenarios.

[Steve21]

Regarding the TV side etc I thought that was more just ease of use

 

Imagine trying to find “your” tv in a list of 88 so if you split it down per block/department vlan etc it’s a lot easier to find things

 

But regarding students etc don’t see any reason you’d need to split them, as I’d assume you’ll have them seperate to teacher devices/tvs anyway

 

Steve

[Tefters]

Regarding the TV side etc I thought that was more just ease of use

 

Imagine trying to find “your” tv in a list of 88 so if you split it down per block/department vlan etc it’s a lot easier to find things

 

But regarding students etc don’t see any reason you’d need to split them, as I’d assume you’ll have them seperate to teacher devices/tvs anyway

 

Steve

Thanks Steve,

 

My thinking exactly and most reasonable answer i've had all week after speaking with companies supplying them.

 

If I dump the 88 Apple TV's 1 VLAN and the iPads on another (which i've already tested) then they cant find each other over broadcast due to different subnets so they go with next best option which is bluetooth which I feel better for discovery as like you say you dont end up with a huge list that way so can actually just get away with them all on the TV's on the 1 subnet.

My only thinking for splitting out further such as department was in case these things start churning out mass broadcasts and/or something else which I wasn't quite aware of.

Having read about some American state schools having issues with 10 or more actively being used on 1 subnet I was just curious as to whether others had seen anything like this.

 

So iPads on 1 subnet, TV's on another it is. Don't see any benefit to putting the teachers iPads on the same subnet as TV's otherwise I will end up with them doing broadcast discovery instead of just bluetooth and I don't see any benefit from seperating them from student iPads either.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Tefters

[Tefters]

Shameless bump for any other input by anyone.

[Brimstone]

Apple have had a really good whole network infastructure planning guide on their site, take a read through...

 

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/deployment-education/edubf50925b3/web

[dhicks]

If I dump the 88 Apple TV's 1 VLAN and the iPads on another (which i've already tested) then they cant find each other over broadcast due to different subnets

 

You can, seemingly, use Avahi to enable service discovery over multiple subnets:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avahi_(software)

 

I would add that, even with a small number of devices per network segment, you need to make sure your devices / AirPlay setups have sensible names that match the room names / numbers people will be looking for. Our equipment tends to get moved around a fair bit, a lot of the PC names don't match the room numbers, which isn't helpful - bluetooth might well be a better option.

[RLR]

We are 1:1 with iPads and have Apple TVs in most of our classrooms. All our Wireless devices including laptops and 1:1 iPads connect to the same vlan/subnet as it uses 802.1x for authentication. We try to have an access point in every classroom. Most Apple TVs are connected via ethernet but some do sit on their own hidden Wifi network.

Our iPads can still see Apple TVs even though they're on different subnets/vlans. I wasn't the one that set this up so don't know the technicalitys of it but I believe it has something to do with our Wifi system, Aruba and their AirGroup service:

 

https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/Instant_40_Mobile/Advanced/Content/UG_files/AirGroup/UnderstandingAirGroup.htm

 

[Tefters]

Thanks all.

 

Pretty much confirmed what I already had planned and good to hear that others that already have the kit in have the same setups.

 

Back to MDM testing and planning it is!

[mavhc]

Measure the broadcast traffic, just leave Wireshark running, you'll soon see how much/little there is.

[msi_school]

When I implemented iPads and Airserver at a school we had the Airservers in a staff VLAN and the iPads in a Wireless VLAN to overcome Bonjour's VLAN limitations we looked at a number of solutions, the solution we came up with was to use a Bonjour gateway service on our Wireless network.

 

This was simple to set up and just worked the only other thing is as @Steve21 says the list of devices to connect to can become long however we just clearly named them and the staff where fine but I suspect mile could vary on this.

[howartp]

We only have half a dozen Apple TVs, on their own VLAN (possibly with the APs).

 

Our old (retired but still operating) Ruckus Zonedirector does the bonjour gateway to allow staff iPads to see the TVs. We do need to find a replacement before I bin the Ruckus as we're now all UniFi.

 

What we have instead of the TVs is https://www.airserver.com/ running on the PCs.

 

Staff only fire it up when they want it, so the issue of "Finding yours out of 88 TVs" becomes "Find yours out of the maximum 10 running at any one time".