Does home sharing use my internet bandwidth?

Home Sharing in itself should not use much internet bandwidth other than for quick authorisation checks for protected iTunes content like movies and tv shows.

What is your download limit per month?

AC

Well it's probably your PC activity.

One thing to note however is rentals can use more bandwidth than you expect.

HD rentals are around 4GB but if you stop, stream some local content, rewatch etc, the movie may redownload each time as the internal memory is limited and rentals wiped by other actions not infrequently. One user said they;d used almost 30GB of data to watch one movie!

AC

Alley_Cat, I have exactly same problem. Just bought and installed Apple TV 2. Started using it ONLY TO STREAM MUSIC FROM MY LAPTOP and my internet usage has suddenly skyrocketed (here there is a ridiculous cap of 4 Gb per month!!!).

Never streamed internet content (Youtube or other).

I have secured the network with password.

So APPLE TV IS OBVIOUSLY USING BANDWIDTH.

Am I doing anything wrong? Is Apple TV somehow accessing internet while on?

Thanks a lot in advance

It may do a little background internet connection but it shouldn't use much if you're not using the internet functions (rentals, previews, YouTube etc).

It will check for updates and may download these automatically when connected.

There is also a setting somewhere (I forget the name) which sends network performance data to Apple - not sure if this could be running some tests and consuming bandwidth - I've disabled this.

AC

Alley_Cat, first of all many thanks for the reply.

I actually blocked automatical software updates. But this shouldn't be the issue, since the usage has been running every day I listened music through Apple TV, so it could not update daily.

Actually it looks like there is a direct correlation between the amount of music I streamed from my laptop to AppleTV and the internet daily (over)usage, as if the music was coming from internet and not from my laptop.

It is indeed strange, unless I let some opening in my security settings that allowed someone to use the sharing to access internet through my Apple TV. Is this possible?

And what if i unplug the modem phone line from the wall when Im using AppleTV, so Im sure Im disconneted from Internet?

Will my Home Network still work? Is it a totally stupid idea? :-(

I assume the music streamed from the laptop was from iTunes - this should only use the LAN and not the internet.

AppleTV2 should be fairly secure - a remote hack into AppleTV 2 is highly unlikely though not necessarily impossible. Assuming you've not unofficially hacked/modified AppleTV2 I strongly doubt this is an issue.

It would be more likely that some other device on your network or unauthorised access to the network (is it wireless? what encryption?) itself was responsible than AppleTV itself.

How is your local network configure?

Router and wireless connections?

Router and mixed connection?

AC

Yes, music streamed from iTunes only.

No modification of AppleTV (anyway I would be technically totally unable to do so).

Network is wireless with router and set as private.

I set up a password protected sharing.

Security WPA@ PErsonal. Encryption AES

marco from the world wrote:

Yes, music streamed from iTunes only.

No modification of AppleTV (anyway I would be technically totally unable to do so).

Network is wireless with router and set as private.

I set up a password protected sharing.

Security WPA@ PErsonal. Encryption AES

Only asked about mods/hacks as they exist and might cause problems, though we can't explicitly discuss what they are and what they do etc.

Your network sounds fine if you're set up for WPA2 Personal not WEP which is quite insecure these days.

AC

marco from the world wrote:

And what if i unplug the modem phone line from the wall when Im using AppleTV, so Im sure Im disconneted from Internet?

Will my Home Network still work? Is it a totally stupid idea? :-(

If you unplug the phone line from the modem things should still work on the LAN - leave AppleTv powered up however as it checks date/time on startup across the internet from memory. It will clearly say it's not connected to internet if you try and access internet features.

Home Sharing should still work if you set it up before disconnecting, however if you try and play any DRM protected iTunes downloads (TV and Movies these days as music is no longer DRM protected), it will probably fail with an authorisation error on AppleTV which uses the internet to authorise .

AC

Ok will do like that then.

AC thanks a lot for your time and help!

bump.

i also have noticed that when i'm streaming anything to my Apple TV (in this case Spotifiy with Airfoil from my iMac to my Apple TV 3), i am seeing upload bandwidth being used. I'm using PeakHour from the Mac App Store to watch my wifi coming from my Airport Extreme plus watching the modem/router everything is being ultimately run thru and i see it on both. Not to mention seeing it also on the app i'm using to monitor how much of that bandwidth my iMac is using (Bandwidth+). Since it's showing up in multiple places with multiple apps then i'm not skeptical that it is just one app reading it incorrectly. i don't get why it's using upload bandwidth. i should clarify, obviously if i'm totally streaming a track in Spotify then yes it would be using download bandwidth as well as upload but i've made sure to be testing this with an offline local track from Spotify to rule out any download bandwidth being used by Spotify.

If it's using upload bandwidth, that means it's pulling something from somewhere outside my local network right? and what would that be? even if it was the Apple TV doing the pulling. the Apple TV is only receiving the stream from my iMac over the local network and not from anywhere else.