BTMM (Back to My Mac): 1000's of requests to port 5354, can't be stopped

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Level 1

9 points

BTMM (Back to My Mac): 1000's of requests to port 5354, can't be stopped

I use my Mac at home and work. I leave .mac logged in, but at work there is a firewall that prevents communication to .mac (port 5354). Since upgrading to Leopard, back to my mac (BTMM) attempts to connect and has generated over 1 million requests per minute. The firewall guys are none-to-happy about this.

I tried to turn off BTMM, but clicking the "Stop" button has no effect; BTMM status shows "On" no matter that I clicked "Stop."

The only way I can get the BTMM status to say "Off" is to sign out of .mac while I'm on my home network and then sign back in and click "Stop" for BTMM. But then, when I return to work, BTMM tries to start up again. And, when I sign-out of .mac, the preference panel forgets my Sync settings and they have to be reset.

Even with this apparent "Off" setting, mDNSResponder continues to run.

I've tried deleting what I believe are the preference files for .mac and BTMM. No luck there.

Any thoughts on how to kill BTMM until Apple improves it?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Dec 6, 2007 4:00 AM

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Answer 1

pi22-7__

Level 1

60 points

Dec 6, 2007 4:53 AM in response to Drew Thoeni

Drew Thoeni wrote:

Even with this apparent "Off" setting, mDNSResponder continues to run.

I've tried deleting what I believe are the preference files for .mac and BTMM. No luck there.

Any thoughts on how to kill BTMM until Apple improves it?

I would strongly urge you to contact Apple. There was one other user who had the same issues. Perhaps, just perhaps, you have single handedly figured out the Airport issue. Apple, so the common wisdom goes, does not monitor these forums, so you status in the Apple community may become enshrined if this turns out to be the problem..but only if you report it! 🙂

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Answer 2

Drew Thoeni Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 6, 2007 7:03 AM in response to pi22-7__

So I called Apple this AM and the Leopard support line 1) was not aware of the problem and 2) while pleasant, directed me to the email-based .Mac support page. I sent them an email and should hear back in 48 hours.

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Answer 3

lethal

Level 2

435 points

Dec 6, 2007 7:08 AM in response to Drew Thoeni

mDNSResponder is not really BTMM. BTMM uses Bonjour - but not necessarily the other way around.

For details of what it is, see - http://developer.apple.com/networking/bonjour/faq.html

If you want to turn mDNSResponder off - disable Bonjour and not BTMM.

Still, are you sure you are generating millions? Or is it the devices on your network responding in the millions to Bonjour requests?

Message was edited by: lethal

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Answer 4

Drew Thoeni Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 6, 2007 7:19 AM in response to lethal

lethal wrote:
mDNSResponder is not really BTMM. BTMM uses Bonjour - but not necessarily the other way around.

For details of what it is, see - http://developer.apple.com/networking/bonjour/faq.html

Still, are you sure you are generating millions? Or is it the devices on your network responding in the millions to Bonjour requests?

Thanks for the tip on mDNSResponder. I agree, that does seem to be unrelated to the BTMM problem I describe.

However, the port number on the packets getting dropped by the firewall is 5354 (BTMM port). And, while it seems like a lot of traffic (I didn't think my MacBook could generate that much traffic), the firewall guys say it is. This is a large network, and there are devices (e.g. printers) that have Bonjour on by default, but I can't see that the broadcast Bonjour traffic would be allowed across the switches we have that isolate each floor and all be sent to the firewall.

So, how do you turn Bonjour off?

Drew

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