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Apple TV with Ethernet and wifi

Hello. Sorry if this issue has been asked and answered, but I am having a hard time getting a consistent answer.


I just got a new Apple TV device. Setup was a breeze. I quickly linked the Apple TV to my home wireless network, and Home Sharing setup with my PC (also connecting wirelessly) was equally easy.


So while everything set up just fine, I've noticed that Apple TV sometimes lags a bit in terms of streaming content, i'm guessing due to the fact that it's connecting wirelessly to my DSL router/modem. The lag isn't terrible, but it's enough to be noticeable.


Now I am wondering if I need to connect Apple TV physically to my router/modem with an Ethernet cable. My hypothesis is that doing so would a.) let Apple TV access the much faster bandwidth of a physical vs. wireless connection, thus solving my lag problems; and b.) relieving the "pressure" on my wireless throughput that my home PC and other iOS devices use.


My question is this: if I hook up Apple TV to my network via Ethernet, how does this affect how it communicates with all of my other devices which use a wireless connection? For example, if I want to Home Share with my PC (which connects via wifi), will Apple TV still be able to do this if one device is connecting wirelessly and one is wired? Will Apple TV still recognize itself on the same network as the wifi devices, and still "talk" with them?


Or if I want to Home Share with my PC, must it and Apple TV be using the same connection method (i.e., either they both have to be wifi,or,they both have to be wired)?


Thanks in advance for any and all help.

AppleTV 2

Posted on Nov 25, 2012 6:50 PM

Reply
20 replies

Nov 18, 2017 1:03 PM in response to rvashko

I have a SIMILAR question.


I have a J5 Create USB to Ethernet adapter. I use it for my MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.


I was just logged into my router and noticed after changing my 2.4 and 5 ghz band's names my Apple TV and iPad said they were connected via LAN as soon as navigated away from changing my wireless bands names. How is this possible? I do not use any "sharing" or remote apple products. I know my Apple TV says Homekit is "there". But I do not use it. As far as Airplay is concerned... this seems like it may be a very big security flaw in the WebKit. What I'm trying to say is if you had a payload on your Mac which no AV is going to pick up, itll beamfoam over to the Apple TV and infect as per an IoT device? As well as my iPad..


Curiously my iPhone 8 wasn't listed. It didn't automatically add this to "LAN". I feel like these devices might be compromised through my MacBook Air. Any input would really help me. There is nothing on the Google.


Thank you in advance @Linc @Winston Churchill or whomever.

Nov 25, 2013 9:26 AM in response to rvashko

So I've been struggling with long buffering times from other devices on my wireless network to my AppleTV. For example, streaming 1080p video content from iTunes on my iMac. I had to wait so long to play a video it was almost not worth it. I was also having video and audio stutters when mirroring my iMac on my AppleTV and using MobileMouse to control the iMac from the living room.


I found a forum on how to check speed of the AppleTV using the Airport Utility. The most my AppleTV was getting is 65 mbps and the worst was 19 mbps.


I solved this problem by plugging the AppleTV into the Airport Express LAN ethernet port. Now the AppleTV can communicate to the base station at 100 mbps (max speed of ATV 3 ethernet port) and since the iMac is doing 144 or 180 mbps, buffering is almost no time and airplay mirroring looks really realy good with only a little bit of loss of quality.


To confirm, if you have an active ethernet connection to your ATV there is no option to join a wireless network. If you go to Settings > General > Network, you'll see that you are connected to ethernet not wireless.


With over 10 "i" devices in my network and two base stations and two other wireless and wired clients, I think giving the AppleTV an ethernet connection is a great way to solve slow buffering and airplay mirroring slow downs. At least it will help you isolate the issue.


BTW, the AppleTV never had much issue playing video from the internet, only from the local network over wifi.


Good luck.


OH, I should add, all of the features avaialble on wifi are available on ethernet: Homesharing, using the Remote App on iPhone, Airplay from iPhone, iPad or Mac. etc.


If you are having losing visibility of the ATV from other devices on your network, it may be that you have put some sort of wall between your ATV and everything else. For instance, maybe you connected your ATV to your cable providers router, but the rest of your devices are connected wirelessly to your Airport Base Station which is also connected to that router. If the Airport Base Station isn't in bridge mode then you won't be able to see any devices not connected directly to the base station.

Dec 29, 2013 6:32 PM in response to Harry Tajchman

I have become increasing annoyed with ATV. I have it wired via Ethernet to the system in my house. An Ethernet switch/hub by the TV has the ATV, my amp, a Mac mini plugged in. That switch goes to another switch/hub in my network. My router is an Apple time capsule which connects to my Comcast modem. I have two apple tv's. One for travel and one for home. I have tried them both and get frequent timeouts when I rent iTunes movies. Fewer timeouts when I watch netflix shows but enough to be annoying. ITunes movies are nearly unwatchable. I have had comcast out to review my system. Rebooted everything numerous times.

I get 56 Mbs down and yet many timeouts. I like the idea of plugging in an AirPort Express near the tv and hard wiring the Apple TV. Would the express be setup in bridge mode?

Jan 1, 2014 10:43 PM in response to rvashko

I've had a similar issue while streaming videos via AirPlay from OSX and iOS devices, where ATV3 (6.0.2 6646.81.1) was buffering for extended periods of time (over a minute), sometime failing (no error, but 3+ minutes was enough for me), without the buffer progress bar moving at all (or very little). The videos played fine while being viewed directly in OSX or iOS. This has started sometime after the last upgrade in October/November and has gotten progressive worse. What resolved it for me, was resetting ATV3 (Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset All Settings).


Hope this helps someone out.

Apr 10, 2014 10:30 AM in response to rvashko

I've been having issues with apple TV buffering for months. I have an an Airport extreme with good quality Cat 5E shielded ethernet cables running to the apple TV (1m cable) and my iMac (10m cable). It has barely been able to buffer SD let alone HD content. As a last resort I bought a new set of Cat 6A ethernet cables and while routing these about the room I connected my imac to my AEBS via wifi. With the apple TV wired and the iMac using wifi it buffered a full HD film in a few minutes. Since I had wired up the new ethernet cables I tried them too and while they were a fraction better than the old ones they were nowhere near as good as with wifi.


I cant explain why this is the case but for me at least the problem is solved. I have looked at the network utility and it lists the ethernet as 1Gb/s with 90 million packets sent and only 9 errors (no idea if this is good or not but sounds ok to me). 10m doesnt seem that long for an ethernet cable, perhaps I have a bad ethernet port?

Jan 4, 2015 3:22 PM in response to big_andy

Coming a bit late to this discussion, but for what it's worth...


I have ATV2 and BT Home Hub 5 which is a dual-band WiFi router. Obviously that doesn't benefit the ATV at it's only single band. I ran for about a year and although buffering wasn't a major problem I did get regular drop-out of service, which was annoying. I have a lot of connected devices these days and as commented in an earlier post WiFi is a single pipe, so struggled to service everything Even though bandwidth was good. I put in a powerline Ethernet system; the points are 500Mbps, each with 3 100Mbps ports, with the whole system driven from one of the 4 Gigaset parts on the router. This allows me to run my network hard drive and other shared devices direct from the router and mobile devices from the now freed-up WiFi. The ATV is now Ethernet-wired to one of the powerline points at 100 Mbps and is fast and reliable; as per an earlier post the Ethernet connection switches out the WiFi connection, but there's no loss of functionality as long as the other devices are also linked to the network, whether by WiFi or Ethernet.

Aug 4, 2015 8:13 PM in response to Globet

Not sure if this is the right lace or not. But I'm attempting to use a wifi bridge in our marina. We were having signal problems so I purchased a Belkin Extender. Worked beautifully. Since then the marina upgraded and added a large extender/bridge/antenna at the end of the dock, close to me.


Now I connect my iphone 6 and my Appletv to the bridge... no AirPlay icon. Put my Belkin back on, works perfectly.


What is it about this new "extender" that's not allowing my devices to see one another? HELP!

Apple TV with Ethernet and wifi

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