APPLE TV DROPPING ITS CONNECTION TO MY WIRELESS ROUTER

Hi All,

Just to add to the topic, since upgrading to Apple TV 3.0 (and its following minor updates), my ATV has been loosing connection to my iMac. My ATV is wirelessly connected to a wireless Belkin router and streams content from my iMac connected via an RJ45 cable to the same router. Unlike many posters, my ATV doesn't loose connection to my router (I am able to connect to iTunes store for example, and have full 5 bars for network strength/connection under settings in the ATV) but it looses connection to my iMac library (I get the swirly gear each time I try to access my iMac library). I had the same problem with my Airport Extreme Base Station before I switched over to Belkin (so I guess router problem could be out of the question).

I have narrowed the cause of the problem down to this: when I put my iMac to sleep and then awake it after a few minutes, my ATV unit can not re-establish a connection to my iMac iTunes library. If I keep my iMac ON at all time the problem does not occur. An alternative solution for me to re-establish the connection is to simple unplug the power cord from the ATV and plug it back in. I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting the network through the ATV but that does not help. I have not tried the static IP suggestion. Will give it a try.

P.S. When the above problem occurs I can still see my ATV listed under devices in iTunes.

Message was edited by: Arman M

Message was edited by: Arman M

Well hey, I'll reply to my own post as I have solved my problem. But this is probably not the same problem that everyone has, as this connection problem comes in several differnt flavours.

I'm not using my ATV with iTunes on my computer, but just connecting directly to the internet, and this was the connection that was having issues, but my home network setup was somewhat complex. I thought I tested the case of plugging the ATV directly into the ADSL modem and observing bad behaviour, but perhaps this was a fluke, or I was remembering wrong, as I tried this again (after reseting to factory default, and re-upgrading to 3.0.1), and it worked. So I reconfigured my home wireless router to not do DHCP and I'm not just using it as a dumb wireless router. I also put my VOIP telephone box on the other side as opposed to having traffic pass through the VOIP box. The sad and frustrating thing is that all my other hardware (3 computers, iPod touch) had no issues with the internet connection, but the ATV did.

So everything is working now. So my advice to all of you is to focus on the configuration of your wireless routers and network boxes. The ATV is probably fine.

good luck!

I don't have a fix but I have something that eases the pain...

Mine never drops when using the connection, its just when idle. I figured I just need to make sure its never idle. So, I just ping it constantly.

No only does the Apple TV drop it's wireless connection it fails to even see my network (Airport Extreme).

It's ridiculous, but I fool it by plugging an Airport Express 'G' into the AC, 50cm from the Apple TV and connecting the two with an ethernet cable. This works perfectly fine and is a robust and satisfactory solution.

It still makes me mad as **** that I have to do this and it's lucky that I had a spare AX.

It demonstrates that it cannot be interference etc. and must be something wrong with the wireless networking in the Apple TV.

Regards

Steffan

It demonstrates that it cannot be interference etc. and must be something wrong with the wireless networking in the Apple TV.

I concur. That's why I gave up on ATV wifi a long time ago. I've had fewer problems with it since connecting it by Ethernet cable. Now if the HDMI glitches and random reboots would go away I could actually enjoy owning it.

Having lived with ATV since initial rollout, I have lived all these problems. But I currently have 4 ATVs running over a single 5.0ghz network via a 3 year old Airport Extreme (single band). The connection is so reliable that I stopped syncing over a year ago and stream everything.

Some things I have learned are that most problems are connectivity between the ATV and the router. I have frequently had 3 of four working fine and the fourth kept dropping the network. That ATV is in the garage and after I moved it 10 feet closer to the Airport it has not dropped out in over a year.

I have had one ATV running for 2 years with the only change being restarts to install updates to the OS. My server is an XP box that runs 24/7 for months without a restart.

I host ITUNES on the XP box but my library on a windows home server. Before the latest update to ITUNES, I would frequently get the error message "unrecognized format" on the ATV. After considerable work I found out that the problem was with the delay time between my windows home server and the ITUNES host. The request to stream the file would time out and I always got the same errormessage. Once I figured out that ATV code was not giving me the right message "your request timed our dummy" I solved the problem by rebuilding my WHS server to a faster box, transferring my library (and backing it up which was fun at 3.5TB of data) and going to a gigabit network between the WHS server and the XP box hosting ITUNES. Also the latest update to ITUNES seems to have increased the time window for time out so I no longer get an error message, it just takes 2-3 seconds to start playing a movie but works just fine.

ITUNES will stream or sync via multiple networks. I have connected my 4 ATVs via mixed networks and ITUNES works just fine. I had 2 on the AE wireless N, 1 on Netlink wireless N, and one ethernet connected. ITUNES synced or streamed to all four just fine.

Once I figured out that the vast majority of my problems were a result of connectivity issues and addressed them my ATV family has been running happily and with nary a problem for many months.

Thought it high time I comment on this on-going saga now that I have a (less than ideal) work around and share some of my experiences trying pretty much every solution on this forum.

I got my ATV in December 09 and right away I had problems with the WiFi. It would lose it’s connection randomly / be very slow to stream. I put it down to my creaking old wired router that was plugged into an Airport Express in a back room.

I went out and bought myself an Airport Extreme and ditched the previous set up. To my surprise: connectivity got worse. On boot up there would be no internet connection. I would restart the ATV (Read: Yank out the power cord) two or three times and then finally it would restart with a full signal as if to look at me all wide-eyed and say, “problem? What problem?” I had to do this every day.

I tried a factory restore and then every darn firmware version I could from 2.0 to the latest. It would work for a little while but then on restart: no connection. I tried every combination I could thing of with the airport settings; manual IP, duel band, single band, moving the router so it was sat next to the ATV. Nothing would work.

So then I put it down to a dodgy unit and sent the ATV back to Apple. They sent me a refurbished model. Got home excited, plugged it in and guess what...SAME PROBLEM.

My conclusion: the WiFi on an Apple TV is flawed. Those of you like the commentator above who have got the WiFi to work, I think you are just lucky that you have a set-up your unit has decided to work with.

I mentioned I had a work around: a wired connection does actually work fine but there was no way my girlfriend would allow me to have a wire running out from the back room, up the hallway to the lounge. So I took that old Airport Express, set it up to extend my wireless network, plugged it in next to the ATV and then ran a cable from it’s port to the ATV. And guess what? It’s been running for a week now, restarted twice a day and it has a flawless connection. Silly? Yes. Expensive and wasteful? Most definitely but at this point I am beyond caring.

5/3/2010: the problem is still unsolved, and that's honestly incredible... 😟
the only way i've found at the moment is to keep the apple tv always on; in fact (in my experience) my apple tv lose network's connection only during the standby mode... but honestly this is not an acceptable solution!