Open Radar

 
Summary: If you have multiple wireless access points on a network Apple TVs lose the Home Sharing connection even if the Apple TV is connected to the iTunes-hosting Mac via ethernet.

Steps to Reproduce: 

Expected Results:

Actual Results:

Regression:

Notes: Sorry, this will be long!

Before today my wireless set-up was that I had an Airport Extreme in my sitting room and an Airport Express in my hallway. The Express boosted the wireless network that the Extreme creates and allowed it to extend down to my bedroom. However, if the Express was switched on Home Sharing would drop out on all three of the Apple TVs in the house (sitting room, my daughter's room and my bedroom) after three or hour minutes. As soon as I turned the Express off the Apple TVs became rock solid again.

The drop-outs would also occur when streaming video from an iPad to an Apple TV via AirPlay Mirroring indicating that the problem is with the Apple TVs and not with the iMac or iTunes.

Today I had a load of ethernet over power devices (TP-Link PA211s) and ethernet cables delivered and have spent a lot of time messing around with my network and setup and can now give you some more information.

I left my Airport Extreme creating the wireless network but connected my Apple TV to it via an ethernet cable. I then connected the Extreme to a PA211. In my office I resurrected my Time Capsule and connected it to another PA211 and then connected my iMac to it via ethernet. Therefore, in theory, the Apple TV in the sitting room was connected to the iMac via ethernet and indeed I verified this by disabling the wireless network on my Extreme and the Apple TV could still play content from my iMac.

I plugged in a third PA211 down in my bedroom and connected it to an Airport Express. I reconfigured this to create a new wireless network using the same name as the Extreme's network (as per Apple's guide to creating a roaming network: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4260). The Apple TV in the sitting room lost the Home Sharing connection after a few minutes despite being connected via ethernet.

I switched off the Express and the Apple TV in the sitting room reconnected with the iMac.

I reconfigured the Express to use a different channel for its wireless network and got the same result.

I switched off the Express and the Apple TV in the sitting room reconnected with the iMac.

I reconfigured the Express to create a completely new wireless network and got the same result.

I switched off the Express and the Apple TV in the sitting room reconnected with the iMac.

I've now stopped my Extreme from creating the wireless network and have the Time Capsule (in the middle of my house) doing it instead. This means that I only have one wireless network being generated from a single device and everything is rock solid again. My Apple TVs are now also all connected via ethernet using the PA211s.

I don't recall having this problem with the Apple TV 4.x firmware (there were occasional drop-outs) so hopefully it is a 5.0 problem that you guys can fix and I can then re-do my wireless network to give me a strong signal throughout the house.