Bonjour/mDNS/AirPlay/Airgroup

[thermseeker]

Hi everybody,

I'm confused about how to set airplay in my environment, checking to see if somebody can give me some orientation.

Many months ago I installed an Apple TV on a conference room in the Admin Office for screen mirroring. By that time we already had a stack of 6450s running there, with regular APs (home grade linksys and similars) for wireless. All devices (PCs with AirParrot, Macs, iPhones, etc) could instantly find and stream content to the ATV. So I conclude that Bonjour/mDNS packets didn't have any trouble circling in the network with that setup.

I then deployed 8x iAP-103 in place of the regular APs, with one of them acting as Virtual Controller. From that day Airplay started to act erratic, and Apple TV could no longer advertise its services. The only ways to make it visible again were cycling power or entering its IP address in AirParrot. After that it remained visible until entering power saving again.

The weird thing is that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and I'm still not able to identify a pattern. I enabled Airgroup and the Airplay service on the virtual controller, but still behaving erratic and not working most of the time. Yesterday I upgraded the APs to the lastest firmware, 6.5.0.0-4.3.0.1. I then tested with Airgroup/Airplay enabled on the VC and voilà, my iPhone found the Apple TV. But then I disabled Airgroup/Airplay and ATV was still there. I read somewhere that mDNS information is cached, could this be the reason why ATP remains visible after disabling Airgroup on the VC?

Also, I found in the 6450 documentation that for mDNS to work with the iAPs I should enable a GRE tunnel between the Omniswitch and the controller. But, why did it work with the cheap APs I had before? It doesn't seem to me that the switch is the problem.

Apple TV is connected by cable to the network;
mdns-relay admin status is disabled on the switch.

Thansk a lot for any reply.

Tales Maschio
tales@tramontina.net

[chaoticliloj]

Hi, I was wondering if you ever had this resolved? I have a similar issue so would be good to have an update

Thanks
Jo Tomasso

[thermseeker]

Hi Jo,

No, I never figured it out. Also, I noticed that enabling Airgroup/Airplay in the Virtual Controller floods the logs in my OS6900 core switches with false DOS warnings so I disabled everything and people is typing the Apple TV's IP address in AirParrot, which is the app we us to stream content from a Windows PC to the Apple TV.

I haven't given up, I just haven't had the time to keep searching. If you ever find something, please post it here. I'll do the same.

Regards,
Tales

[chaoticliloj]

I will do, it's being a nightmare at the moment, so was hoping to hear you'd managed to fix it. Good luck