Apple TV name followed by random number when using AirPlay

It's odd whatever the reason, and if you consider if doesn't show a number by default I doubt it's part of the IP address being shown.

I've never seen it reach double digits, but it's odd. Very odd 😮

Alley_Cat wrote:

It's odd whatever the reason, and if you consider if doesn't show a number by default I doubt it's part of the IP address being shown.

I believe you are right

Periodically, my Apple TV's power light comes on without me turning the Apple TV on. I assume it is set to automatically check for updates. Each time it comes on, the random number following "Living Room Apple TV" in the mirroring display increases by one. When I turn on the Apple TV and watch something, the random number disappears and then, some time later, appears and increases one by one, I assume following the random power up. Everything works right, just a mystery.

Well, so much for my theory....my Apple TV now shows (4) , and I've certainly never owned that many Apple TVs.

Anybody figured this out yet?

After the recent software update, I am up to 694.

I have one ATV a Mini, 2 iPads, Touch and a new MBP and mine is up to 6024. My ATV does the same thing with waking up all of the time even though it's set to sleep after 1hr. It randomly awakens all the time and wonder if it has to do with updating the photos for the screen saver (iTunes - Choose photos to share). That's when it started to show up on my system...that I can recall. Apple has always had issues with this feature and this may be yet another bug.

I may be wrong but I believe this is related to a Bonjour naming conflict. I have noticed similar naming behavior like this with computers on my home network; i.e. a computer being renamed to ComputerName-2.local for no apparent reason. The problem seems to be caused by Bonjour trying to re-register the same computer, with the same name, twice. This causes a naming conflict that Bonjour resolves by adding a number. I think that the AppleTVs exhibit the same behavior, with the parenthesed number (x) instead of the dash number -x.

For example, my son goes to college, and when he comes home, his laptop always shows up with an incremented number (2...3...4...etc.). This is, unquestioningly, Bonjour resolving a naming conflict. Likewise, if I change the name of my AppleTV to NewAppleTV, the number goes away but eventually returns- NewAppleTV (2). I don't know why the network does this, but I strongly suspect Bonjour is the source.

Again, I'm not sure this is the reason for this behavior but it seems to make the most sense. I haven't researched this that much with regard to the details of how to fix Bonjour but I suspect the fix is related to resetting the network, probably at the router level (though simply restarting the router doesn't seem to do anything). I suspect the whole Bonjour network needs to be reset.

As others have posted, although annoying, the naming issue doesn't seem to affect performance, and I wouldn't expect it to do so.

If your basestation supports simultaneous dual-band wifi (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), the AppleTV may be connecting to each network at different times of the day and therefore appearing to the router as two different devices. Each time it reconnects to the alternate network, the number likely advances by one. Assigning a different names to each network might help solve the issue.

I keep having the problem with the number after the AppleTV name. It is VERY unnerving. What I did find out is the following: There is a multitude of registered services with Bonjour (using Bonjour Browser, but one can get the full list also in the Terminal), only one of which is the actual AppleTv. The other records are empty.

I tried the following to reset the Bonjour service:

1. Restart all devices, computers and router

2. Reset the router.

3. Disable and enable all network interfaces on my Mac

4. tried in Terminal:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

5. Tried in Terminal:

dscacheutil -flushcache

6. Switched off my computer overnight.

The old entries still persist. I seem to remember somewhere in the Bonjour documentation that the DNS should remove entries that expire after a while. Well my AppleTV has been renamed to Living Room Apple TV for already a week and the old Apple TV entries still persist!!!!

Are these cached somewhere in iCloud?

Anybody has any idea how to get rid of those?

I think holb is on to something. I have three ATV 3's. Two are hardwired, and one is wireless. 'LR ATV' is on wireless and exhibits the naming issue... It's 'LR ATV (1242)' currently.

I have an Airport Extreme that was running in 2.4/5ghz mode, so I'll try switching to 2.4ghz only mode and see if it changes anything.

Has anyone found a resolution for this yet? When this happens I am unable to Mirror an iPad to the apple tv.
The only temporary solution is to rename the apple tv but then it happens again within a day.

Nope. No info from Apple Engineering since I sent them my capture data on the 20. March.

On the other hand I've set a new numbering record with 1064...

My apple TV has been on a fixed IP, but Wireless connection. Seems the wireless connection and Bonjour are the problem, but aparently not enough people complaining...

Same here, Ivan. I'm kind of at a loss. I went back and looked over my system, and I forgot that only one of my ATV's is wired ethernet! In my screen shot, only HT ATV is wired; MBR ATV and LR ATV are both wireless, yet only LR ATV exhibits the annoying behavior. They're all set up as DHCP.

I just tried a full restore. It came back fine with "Apple TV" as the name. I just renamed back to "LR ATV", and so far, so good. I'll post back here in a day or two and update with status.

Just thought I'd follow up on this. My "LR ATV" is still "LR ATV", even after five days. I'll keep on eye on it, but so far, so good. Not really anything to lose with these new Apple TVs. If you can, just try a full restore like I did.

Cheers!

Just came across this, and, yes, have the same problem ... Could you indicate, ecrabb, what it is you call a "full restore" ?! I'd like to try the same thing. Thanks for your reaction !

Jan