Mario MG

Q: AppleTV 3 floods DHCP when ethernet connected

I am hoping others can open a case with Apple for this, you may not be aware this is happening.

 

The AppleTV 3 with 7.0.2 or 7.0.3, and connected via ethernet will (may?) flood your network with DHCP request. That is, it makes a DHCP request every 2-6 seconds instead of once or so a day. This does not happen if connected via wifi. I have a log sent by my router (Zyxel) once a day and prior to the ATV 3 it was 1 page long, now it is 50 pages long! 99 percent of it is the ATV 3 sending DHCP requests. If you don't have a way of monitoring your network you may notice this is happening so you'll need to log/monitor this to see it. If you have the problem please open a case with Apple as I have done since Apple Feedback does not help fix thing in a timely fashion. My understanding is that this was known and fixed in 7.0.3 but only for wifi connections. I have the house wired for cat 6 and want ethernet for our primary ATV 3.

 

This does not happen to our ATV 3s connected via wifi and our older Apple TV 2s.

Posted on Feb 13, 2015 12:18 PM

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Q: AppleTV 3 floods DHCP when ethernet connected

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  • by Willie Strickland,

    Willie Strickland Willie Strickland Feb 16, 2015 4:04 AM in response to Mario MG
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Feb 16, 2015 4:04 AM in response to Mario MG

    You can use a static address for the AppleTV without using static addresses for all 45+ devices.  In our setup, we only use 2 static addresses, the router itself obviously & the AppleTV.  Every other device uses DHCP.  I just found that our setup works best that way.  I have an ATV2.

     

    Since the ATV3 has 2 interfaces (Ethernet & wifi) it will need 2 IP addresses, one for each interface.

     

    To clarify -- I have our router setup to always assign 192.168.1.2 to the 12 digit wifi interface address of my ATV2.  It is a reserved DHCP address and is never assigned to other devices requesting an address.  The ATV2 is still set to DHCP, but it always gets the same address.

  • by Mario MG,

    Mario MG Mario MG Feb 16, 2015 9:37 AM in response to Willie Strickland
    Level 1 (27 points)
    Apple Pay
    Feb 16, 2015 9:37 AM in response to Willie Strickland

    First of all, I don't want static and reserving an address does not help since the ATV is triggering this no matter what the router does. t is an ATV bug that does not happen on older ATVs. Secondly, the ATV  is not supposed to have 2 addresses when wifi was never activated. The second address is not supposed to show up on ethernet even it is was active (but you can't activate both interfaces on an ATV anyway). I have been doing networking for 30 years so I know a little about how thing are supposed to work and this is a bug in the ATV 3 software that needs to be fixed. Still waiting to hear back from Apple on the case.

  • by Mario MG,

    Mario MG Mario MG Feb 16, 2015 9:48 AM in response to Willie Strickland
    Level 1 (27 points)
    Apple Pay
    Feb 16, 2015 9:48 AM in response to Willie Strickland

    Forgot to mention, it always gets the same adress even if I power off/on, and the second address that pops up stays the same. Only time it the address might change is if I power off both the ATV and router, but the ATV just continues to flood. Hope this helps others trying to get Apple to fix this. Again, if you are using ethernet and have a way to see this problem please open a case. It's not like it's sending a lot of data but it can affect network performance since the network is constantly active and your router has to handle the requests continually without ever stopping.

  • by RWP123,

    RWP123 RWP123 Feb 16, 2015 11:46 AM in response to benji888
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 16, 2015 11:46 AM in response to benji888

    So I tried the ethernet cable again, no luck. Unplugged the ATV 3 for 30 secs, powered on with the Mini and ATV 3 connected by ethernet, signed out/in my apple ID. Now I get a stationary picture from a movie (stuck on the frame where I activated Airplay). iTunes homesharing works fine, as do my iOS devices, both music and video.

     

    Is there anything else I can try?

     

    My inclination is that Apple broke Airplay with one of their soft/firm-ware updates.

  • by RWP123,

    RWP123 RWP123 Feb 16, 2015 12:11 PM in response to RWP123
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 16, 2015 12:11 PM in response to RWP123

    BTW Airparrot works fine. Wish the picture was as big as via Airplay. Now that is a workaround!

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Feb 16, 2015 12:28 PM in response to Mario MG
    Level 5 (7,537 points)
    Notebooks
    Feb 16, 2015 12:28 PM in response to Mario MG

    Have you considered that assigning the static IP might just be a useful test, can you try it to test? It may help others if it alters this behaviour, especially the ones who do not have 30 years of experience, the equipment or knowledge to test correctly.

     

    You could assign the static address on the Apple TV via it's network settings, perhaps manual mode could make it stop asking for new leases provided you add the correct subnet mask etc. If possible it may be worth setting a fixed address on the wifi interface (or disable wifi if the ATV will allow it). I don't have an ATV, I'm just trying to think up possible solutions.

     

    I understand this looks like a bug from the latest update & if that is the case it should be fixed, in the mean time figuring out a workaround may help with stability for other users.

  • by Mario MG,

    Mario MG Mario MG Feb 16, 2015 2:06 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (27 points)
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    Feb 16, 2015 2:06 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Please folks, no more static advice, as I previously stated, setting static turns off the DHCP requests in the ATV so the flooding does not happen, but that is not what I want. I have 5 Apple TVs in the house and don't plan on using static and add complexity to my LAN just to mask an obvious software bug. This does not "look like a bug", it is a big one for the people who are experiencing it. Again, I sent Apple the network traces, anyone can see the problem and they are aware of it but others opening case gets to more priority.

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Feb 16, 2015 2:20 PM in response to Mario MG
    Level 5 (7,537 points)
    Notebooks
    Feb 16, 2015 2:20 PM in response to Mario MG

    Mario MG wrote:

     

    Please folks, no more static advice, as I previously stated, setting static turns off the DHCP requests in the ATV so the flooding does not happen, but that is not what I want.

     

    You have just posted a potential workaround for other users, which was all I was asking for, thanks.

     

    You have made it clear static is not an option for you, but for every other ATV user it might help.

  • by BX52,

    BX52 BX52 Feb 18, 2015 2:03 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 18, 2015 2:03 PM in response to Drew Reece

    I have the same problem.

    I recently moved from a commercial router to a custom build Linux router and now i can see the stream of DHCP requests from ATV3 in my logs.

    Ever since I switched my ATV3 to use Ethernet instead WiFi I started to have issues; mainly that airplay would not wake up ATV3 anymore and i had to manually start ATV and then connect via airplay which i never had to do when the thing was using wifi.

    Obviously there are workarounds: use wifi or the static IP, but that is not the point and I am with Mario on this one. ATV3 should work just like anything Ethernet connected ,and the fact that this issue was reported to Apple and nothing is happening tells me that they don't care. They probably have enough customers that do not look into this kind of detail. If the customer doesn't know there is a problem then there is no problem right?!

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Feb 18, 2015 2:28 PM in response to BX52
    Level 5 (7,537 points)
    Notebooks
    Feb 18, 2015 2:28 PM in response to BX52

    You seem to have misunderstood my intentions.

    I don't disagree with what you said, Apple should fix it. I'm simply here trying to suggest that if workarounds can be found maybe sharing them could benefit everyone, is that unreasonable?

  • by Mario MG,

    Mario MG Mario MG Feb 18, 2015 3:14 PM in response to BX52
    Level 1 (27 points)
    Apple Pay
    Feb 18, 2015 3:14 PM in response to BX52

    BX52, I also have the ATV 3 not waking problem, but only on ethernet, see my post Apple TV 3 Will Not Wake Up , the Apple Remote app and Roomie will not wake up ATV 3, fine with ATV 2. Also, I just talked to Apple today and sent them info about people also having Airplay issues mentioned on this thread.

     

    Please please please open a case with Apple about the DHCP issue. Thanks! https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action

  • by kmacmill,

    kmacmill kmacmill Mar 15, 2015 5:55 PM in response to Mario MG
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 15, 2015 5:55 PM in response to Mario MG

    Any response to this from Apple yet?

     

    I have just realized that this problem is occurring - I have three ATVs and each has it's own static IP. Logs show that each unit is requesting a new lease approximately every 2 minutes.

  • by Mario MG,

    Mario MG Mario MG Mar 17, 2015 10:56 AM in response to kmacmill
    Level 1 (27 points)
    Apple Pay
    Mar 17, 2015 10:56 AM in response to kmacmill

    I updated to 7.1 which fixed the not waking up issue, but not only did it not fix the DHCP flooding but now the network name is scrambled. My AppleTV is called "AppleTV Living Room" which should have the spaces replaced by dashes, but instead it is now "AppleTVvingRoom". Of course I reported back to them.

     

    If you have this flooding issue please open an Apple incident, according to them no one else is reporting this!

  • by GriffithLea,

    GriffithLea GriffithLea May 1, 2015 9:05 AM in response to Mario MG
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 1, 2015 9:05 AM in response to Mario MG

    Thanks for this, Mario. I was looking at my router logs for a completely different reason, and noticed that our AppleTV (not sure of rev - it's probably a 2) was requesting a new lease every minute or two. For me, the workaround of switching it to WiFi was the easy choice. No more DHCP flooding now.

  • by jjkraw,

    jjkraw jjkraw May 1, 2015 12:23 PM in response to Mario MG
    Level 2 (336 points)
    Apple TV
    May 1, 2015 12:23 PM in response to Mario MG

    I just stumbled upon this thread and as an owner of three ATVs, all Ethernet wired, I've never seen this (and just looked at both the router and took a WireShark trace and do not see it happening right now). So, a few questions:

     

    1) Does this happen with the ATV in a particular state (sleep, up but not running an app, running any particular app) or all of the time?

     

    2) What is the time frequency of the DHCP Discover messages from the ATV?

     

    3) What is the DHCP lease time as configured on the router?

     

    Probably more questions after these, but it is a start. Just want to see if I can re-create it to get more info.

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