Potential Fix for Dropped Connections

[xcalibur]

Am using the first generation Apple TV and the latest version of iTunes. In the past few weeks my Apple TVs (2 of them) have been frequently dropping its connection to my Mac Pro (whether set to "Sync" or "Stream"). Haven't had this problem in the past so I'm guessing one of the iTunes updates is probably the cause.

Having gone through many threads on MacRumors as well as Apple's Discussion Forums, i tried two things:

1. Ensuring the Firewall isn't blocking iTunes (which it wasn't)
2. Set up my Mac Pro to be on a manual IP rather than DHCP

Step #2 has now solved the problem. To be safe, both my Apple TVs are also on manual IPs now.

For those not familiar, you can actually set up manual IPs on a network setup with DHCP. Just make sure your manual IPs are far away from the first IP allocation to avoid any potential conflicts. E.g. if your router is 10.0.1.1 you can set your Mac/PC to 10.0.1.100 and your Apple TVs to 10.0.1.101, etc.

Hope this helps. Diagnosing problems on the Apple TV can be one of the most frustrating experiences!

 

[ansalmo]

For those not familiar, you can actually set up manual IPs on a network setup with DHCP. Just make sure your manual IPs are far away from the first IP allocation to avoid any potential conflicts. E.g. if your router is 10.0.1.1 you can set your Mac/PC to 10.0.1.100 and your Apple TVs to 10.0.1.101, etc.

That's not particularly foolproof, as it does depend on what range your DHCP server is configured to use. For example, mine starts giving out IPs from 100, so would cause an immediate collision.

You can either configure your DHCP server so as not to use a specific block of IPs, and assign them statically to your devices, or alternatively have it reserve specific IPs based on the MAC address of the devices that you want to remain static. The former is probably the easier option, and it's how I've set up my kit (with static entries in DNS too).