Airplay and BT Home Hub seem to be fighting!

Hi,
Did you manage to resolve this problem?
I have the same issue with my MCr 603. I can get Airplay to work from iTunes and iPhone 4 but it often cuts out and 'freezes' the Mcr603 or if I disconnect the speaker then try to reconnect it cannot find the Airplay device.

I have a Thomson Gateway router supplied by my ISP (BE Broadband). Wondering whether I will need to upgrade this to get Airplay working?

I haven't tried changing the Wi-Fi band, did you have any success with this?

Cheers
T

Turns out it was my next door having 2 routers on the go. They had a new HH3 and a Netgear for the childs Xbox they had channel 11 and 6 tied up so changed to channel 1 and had no problems.

I have recently set up an iPad and printer for a Pre-school who needed AirPrint as a core feature and much to my dismay I came across this same problem which also effects Airplay function and after some research I managed to untangle the problem and I thought I would share my finding as I am sure there are an awful lot of people who will be having the same problem.

These are my finding from other forums.

1. I note that some forums suggested updating the firmware of printers and whilst in some instances this was the problem in the early days of AirPrint (canon Mg6100/6200 for example need Ver. 2.0 or later) that's no so much the case with new printers and irrelevant for AirPlay.

2. Some other forums suggest changing to WPA or worse WEP, whilst this might work for some this isn't the problem, more a work round which exposes your data.

3. Buy an new airport/time capsule, daa!! Very nice but not necessary in this instance!

Solution.

BT Home Hub 3 uses "smart wireless" which is supposed to switch channels when interference is detected, microwaves etc but this means that automatic Chanel swapping happens on the fly and the reason why it works one minute and not the next. This system seems to interfere with bonjour and hence AirPrint/AirPlay.

To undo this go to the home hub home page http://bthomehub.home/ You may need to enter the admin password on the removable plastic tab for access.

Select the "settings" tab.

Select "advanced settings" in the sub tab.

Select "wireless" in the sub-sub tab if you like.

In the "channel selection" you will see "Smart Wireless" selected by default.

Set this to channel 11 and select "apply" at the bottom.

9 times out of 10 this will work as everything seems to like channel 11 but if this doesn't work the other favourites are channel 1 and 7.

I hope this helps as I can't imagine how many iPhone/ipod/ipad sporting homes who have Home Hub 3's can't print or play music for this very simple reason.

What seemed to work for me:

Access your BT Homehub

Go to Advanced Settings, Then to Firewall.

Select UPnP

Disable Extended UPnP security

Establish the connection between the desired devices and turn Extended UPnP security back on..... or alternatively keep it off.

Hope it Helps

AIRPLAY solution shared by sleekitwan in various forums, eg Apple, BT:

Hi

First, before you lose interest - I have a solution that works so well to get BT Home Hub 3 working with 'Airplay' and Apple TV and my iPad 4, that I am so far unable to 'break' it. Please do try to break it yourself, and could you report back here or mark it with stars or whatever so I know what happened in someone else's setup?

I appreciate what you are going through, all I wanted to do was get 'Real Racing 3' running for me and the kidz on the TV that is attached to Apple TV box. Sometimes the Airplay icon appeared, sometimes not, it was chance - really frustrating.

The nub of it is this - you 'reserve' certain aspects of how the HH3 services the wifi network, so it directs data/communications via these 'reserved' ports specifically assigning them to the purpose you need - in this case, 'stuff' (technical eh?) going to the Apple TV so that Airplay works.

Apple forums somewhere list these publicised ports, and you go into HH3 management (tap in the IP address of the hub in 'safari' to get there, then put in your password for admin - it is 'admin' if you didn't change it already). In short, you use one of the games/applications that already are in the list for 'Port Forwarding', and I modified the name of a new one I made to make it like 'Airplay attempt using BT alarm' or something, because I 'copied' the BT safe alarm app details to start my custom one off. Lost yet?! Go into the HH3 manager, go to the A-Z I think it might be in 'advanced' and get 'Port Forwarding' up.

Ok, here's the things to set - if you peruse the apps/games they already list in HH3 for this sort of thing, you will see entries under 'TCP' or 'UDP' headings, and it's these sort of things we want to reserve. I only set the single specific addresses (it's just a number to you and me) that were listed on the Apple site as being to do with Airplay:

There are only 2 bits to set - you hit the button on screen in HH3 manager, to 'add entry', then select in the box marked 'protocol' that you want TCP or UDP according to the info I dug up from Apple site below - don't worry it is not complex to do you are just editing a couple of figures on a thing you don't use. Incidentally, I left the first two entries as they were (1024 was in there already) because I am just timid! So set it as below.

TCP 1024 -

UDP 1024 -

TCP 80 80

Any 123 123

TCP 443 443

Any 554 554

TCP 3689 3689

UDP 5353 5353

I took a pic of mine, for records, and this is what is in that pic. You have to enter the self-same number (eg 123 as above) no less than 4 times, this gives the results above.

On the bottom right, there is a button that says 'apply', so you hit that and it saves this new-fangled custom designed list of reserved ports/addresses for your 'Airplay BT alarm' or whatever you called it. THEN YOU MUST ASSIGN THIS CREATION OF YOURS TO A DEVICE - THE APPLE TV.

That's the basics of what I did - I have since restarted the BT HOMEHUB 3 several times, the Ipad 4 several times, the Apple TV has updated its software and has been restarted twice. STILL AIRPLAY WORKS.

So, I am reassuringly presented with the Airplay icon whenever I 'upswipe' on my ipad from the bottom of the screen - iOS 7.1 is on my ipad obviously, but that did not change the hit-and-miss of the Airplay icon until I made these mods to the HH3.

Over to you - try and break my solution please, and let me know if it works for you as well, or not. All I know is, Real Racing 3 can reliably be brought to bear on the Apple TV thing, and the Airplay icon is now never missing.

One more point - I think I also set the Apple TV IP address to be static - my ipad has had this situation for some time, along with the 'lease' set to a couple of weeks or something, so it does not try to select a different channel for wifi frequently? PLUS, I set something in the ipad I think, long ago (did not affect this issue as far as I can see), so that when the ipad 'wakes up' it does not decide to search for a better channel or IP address or something - that caused loads of glitches it seemed, then I found out my BT HH3 was on the end of dodgy phone cable not hi-quality shielded...but hey, that's a different bucket of bolts.

Good luck and let me know an outcome please, best to all.