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tical1969

Q: maximum number of airplay devices in one instllation

Hello

 

What are the maximum of airplay devices we can now connect into a single home installation ?

 

Regards

Posted on Mar 12, 2012 10:26 AM

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Q: maximum number of airplay devices in one instllation

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Damian Smith1,Helpful

    Damian Smith1 Damian Smith1 Mar 12, 2012 10:31 AM in response to tical1969
    Level 3 (740 points)
    Mar 12, 2012 10:31 AM in response to tical1969

    That depends.  I currently have two, but I've seen people posting with as many as 5 ATV, a couple ipads,1-2 iphones and a 2-3 computers all hook up

     

    It should depend on how many active connection you router can handle

  • by tical1969,

    tical1969 tical1969 Mar 12, 2012 10:41 AM in response to Damian Smith1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 12, 2012 10:41 AM in response to Damian Smith1

    Thanks Damian

     

    I was hopping some sort of apple limitation, but i cannot see any throught documentations...

     

    My purpose is to fully equip a whole House with around 15 Zones (devices ATV2) + 5 Zones Ipoud Touch.

     

    But i wanted to make sure it is possible before making an offer.

  • by steve copeland,Helpful

    steve copeland steve copeland Mar 12, 2012 11:08 AM in response to tical1969
    Level 1 (55 points)
    Mar 12, 2012 11:08 AM in response to tical1969

    I have 7 ATV's, 6 airtunes and half a dozen, ipad/iphone's on mine LAN without problem, they all work and appear in the list for airplay.  I am running a gigabit LAN with Wireless N for the devices.

  • by Winston Churchill,

    Winston Churchill Winston Churchill Mar 12, 2012 11:11 AM in response to tical1969
    Level 10 (104,363 points)
    Apple TV
    Mar 12, 2012 11:11 AM in response to tical1969

    I don't know if there is a limit to AirPlay devices, but I think the one that might limit you is homesharing. You can only have 5 computers on a single homesharing account and whilst I haven't seen any official word, I've seen a handful of reports were users have been unable to add more than 10 Apple TV's to an account. (there was certainly a limit of 5 Apple TV 1's)

  • by tical1969,

    tical1969 tical1969 Mar 12, 2012 11:46 AM in response to Winston Churchill
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 12, 2012 11:46 AM in response to Winston Churchill

    Thanks Steve & Winston

     

    So, ATV2 is not so far an unlimited solution, i will have to go further in order to make a trustfull proposal.

     

    Reagrds to all.

     

    Alexandre

  • by Winston Churchill,

    Winston Churchill Winston Churchill Mar 12, 2012 12:23 PM in response to tical1969
    Level 10 (104,363 points)
    Apple TV
    Mar 12, 2012 12:23 PM in response to tical1969

    Personally I'm inclined to think that what you are wanting to do requires a solution on a commercial scale. Apple TV, while I believe to be an excellent product is after all a consumer product.

  • by tical1969,

    tical1969 tical1969 Mar 12, 2012 1:07 PM in response to Winston Churchill
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 12, 2012 1:07 PM in response to Winston Churchill

    Yes Winston You are right

     

    The point is, that  more & more clients are demanding "apple" which is a "marketing" point of view from the "end user", without taking into account the limits of mass consumer products.

     

    Regards

  • by Harpg,

    Harpg Harpg Mar 26, 2013 8:23 AM in response to tical1969
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 26, 2013 8:23 AM in response to tical1969

    Hi Guys,

     

    In answer to your points here is what I have found when installing my system:

     

    14 zone system (14 apple TVs; 14 Airplay receiver amps; Quad-core 8 GB RAM Dell PowerEdge Rack mount server (4 TeraBytes); 1 Mac server with homeshare; 1GB 24 port switch; 1GB 4 port router; 2 x 1GB wireless access points).

     

    So far I have had no issues with the receiver limit (6 zones set up so far). Make sure your Apple TV's are directly linked to your switch using CAT6 so that they do not take up wireless Bandwidth. Use the wireless for your IOS devices.

     

    A point to note is that even though you may be running a 1GB network, the Apple TVs and your Airplay amplifiers are 10/100. 

     

    The homeshare 5 machine limit is a non-issue as the Airplay receivers are IOS devices. Homeshare applies to mac devices and is only an Apple method of serving out the media you have stored on Itunes on different machines. 5 machines is more than adequate (or simply consolidate it on a single server using Air Video and Handbrake (make sure the copyright laws in your country allow you to do so :-) ). I have both mac homeshare server and my main Dell server is running the Air Video Server with Air Video clients on my Ipads and Iphones.

     

    There is no need for commercial solutions which cost a fortune (NOT that this is working out cheap...it is all relative).

    This solution is costing no-more than a Sonos Home system, which only lets you stream audio to different rooms. The difference is that with Sonos you can control each room from the same controller, with this system you need one IOS devices for every room you want to play different media in. NOT a big deal as the up side is that you can also stream video and also mirror your IOS device screen i.e play satellite TV e.g Skygo or Skype to your TV screen and also view all your photo albums.

     

    Good Luck!

  • by tical1969,

    tical1969 tical1969 Mar 26, 2013 9:29 AM in response to Harpg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 26, 2013 9:29 AM in response to Harpg

    Hello

     

    Thanks for this very interesting response

     

    I am up to 7 devices on "air" with a mix of wired and wifi (it for testing purpose)(Yamaha air play amp + app tv + airport + pc and mac running "air server + ios ipad running airfloat... for fun only), and we strongly think about developping and app. for multiroom with multi user. (we did so a long long time ago in a far away galaxy... with slim devices :o). Sync is pretty good especially with wired devices as long as the master computer running itunes is on a wired network (we plugged and unplugged couple of devices couple of time, and mostly in all cases, the sync came back asap ituned started a new song...) The weakest device to connect with, is ios ipad with airfloat...

     

    Thanks a lot.

    Regards

    Alexandre

  • by Wardsidjame,Solvedanswer

    Wardsidjame Wardsidjame Dec 15, 2013 12:42 PM in response to tical1969
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Dec 15, 2013 12:42 PM in response to tical1969

    Currently have installed 48 Apple TV's throughout the school i work in, as the services required multicasting you need to make sure IGMP is on and we have restricted multicasting to a specific "iOS" device network.

     

    All Apple TV's and Staff iPads are on the same vLan even though the Apple TV's are physically connected and the iPads are wireless, we have contained the Multicase traffic within this vLan for these devices to ensure they dont interfere with the other wireless networks and LAN traffic.

     

    As far as i can tell you can have as many as you want, all our iOS devices happily show every device in every room without issue and works fine under quite a lot of load, staff even stream video to them and we never have an issue.

     

    (might be worth adding we have a very good wireless and network infrastructure)

  • by tical1969,

    tical1969 tical1969 Dec 15, 2013 11:46 PM in response to Wardsidjame
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2013 11:46 PM in response to Wardsidjame

    Thank You for this precise reply.

     

    Alex