Q: AirPlay over ASUS RT-N56U
-
Apr 1, 2013 10:19 AMby interested_party,I had the exact same problem. The 3.xxx firmware seems to have trouble with AirPlay. My router fortunately had an older version of the firmware (1.0.1.7f) originally, so I knew it worked fine. I tried termosen's response, but to my surprise IGMP snooping was already disabled for both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz spectrums. I advise using Asus' firmware restoration utility (available at the same place as the firmware under Utilities) to downgrade to mine. It is a bit technical. You need a windows computer to run the utility, you will have to direclty plug your laptop into the router via ethernet (a LAN port, not a WAN port), and then place the router in rescue mode (by unplugging the power, holding down the reset button, and plugging it back in; don't release until the power light is slowly flashing), and then running the utility. Since restoring, my AirPlay works fine. Hope this helps.
-
Apr 17, 2013 4:03 PMby interested_party,UNKNOVVN,
My problem manifested in exactly the same way. Sometimes the airplay would return on its own. And I doubt ASUS pays much attention to these problems. They likely affect a small percentage of users due to minor variations in the hardware. So any fix would take a long time to come.
-
May 13, 2013 1:21 PMby johnmacward,Hi, I had the exact same problem on my Asus RT-N56u and found that enabling "Multicast" traffic fixed it for all my devices (iPhone and iPad). The Asus blocks multicast traffic even over the LAN by default.
iTunes and the devices advertise themselves on a single multicast address of 224.0.0.251 and this was being completely blocked by the Asus router, hence the devices couldn't find each other.
I was in the fortunate position of having two wireless routers and realised that when one worked flawlessly and the Asus didn't that it was definitely something to do with networking and NOT iTunes and my devices.
This could potentially apply to many peoples scenarios on differnet routers. Find the setting that deals with Multicast traffic and make sure it is enabled or allowing multicast traffic and hopefully you'll be sorted.
-
May 30, 2013 1:00 PMby Joahop,I updated to the same firmware version and I activated Multicast with the same settings. To my disappointment, it's still not working and I feel like cutting the d*mn thing into pieces with an axe. ;-)
How did you know that you should choose HTMIX 130/144 instead of any of the other alternatives?
I have deactivated IGMP Snooping, because that helped other users before. It didn't help me. I guess that I will have to try some different combinations of these two settings...or at least find out which should be the right multicast setting to use.
I wonder if it otherwise could be the network speed negotiation? I don't know where to check this.
-
May 30, 2013 1:04 PMby interested_party,Neither davebrook nor andrew132 have discovered a fix. Both of these "fixes" are documented elsewhere, where you can see that they do not end up working. Andrew132 is not located too far from the router. The multicast setting did not fix the problem. It appeared to be fixed, but in reality it was just a coincidence. The fact that you had to turn the wifi on and off shows this to be the case. Furthermore, while I can't tell what either of you did to test, everyone should be aware that the fact that the airplay icon appears in Finder does not mean that that it is working. Often the icon persists after the actual ability to airplay is lost by the router.
The IGMP snooping merely resets the router and that temporarily fixes the problem. In any case, even if these were genuine workarounds, they would still be just that. A fix would not require you to do anything. That's why ASUS should step up here and actually fix the problem. Airplay is a standard, widely used protocol that should be supported by default.
