DHCP conflicts between AppleTV and Airport Extreme repeater

Hi LaPastanague,

thanks for your reply and suggestions. Quite frankly, your suggestion to split up DHCP is no solution, that's a workaround that indeed works fine (tried that already but the downside is I have no central overview of DHCP leases anymore). I'd really just like to use my router for that and I see no reason why using such a central DHCP should cause the issues I'm seeing - unless maybe there's a bug in the AE software indeed.

I tried your other suggestions though:

- Resetting the (2013) AE to factory default and reconfiguring: no effect;

- Abbreviating the device name to 'old SMB style': no effect (but then again, we're using SMB2 these days so that indeed should have no effect. Also Bonjour will 'fix' spaces and long names in addressing internally in my experience, and the Meraki dashboard seems to have no problems with it either).

I'd like to add some details to the issue I'm seeing:

The mentioned DHCP conflicts only occur between a wired and a wireless device connected to the same Airport Extreme in Bridge Mode, OR (less common) between any connected Wireless device and the Airport Extreme itself.

The issue is most commonly seen when conflicting devices either request or update a DHCP lease with a relatively short time from eachother (within a minute or so).

The central DHCP device (my Meraki router) logs that both conflicting devices are claiming the same IP. Even specifying a DHCP reservation does not fix the conflict as the duplicate claims persist.

To me this leads to the conclusion that either the DHCP forwarding or claim broadcasting via the Airport Extreme in Bridge Mode is faulty when devices are connected to it both wired and wireless.

Devices connected via a wireless repeater that is extending the AE's Wi-Fi do not seem to have any DHCP issues.

Hi turbostar,

thanks for your reply but that really has nothing do with the issue... I am aware of the repeater implications and the (2013) Airport Extreme is the only device acting as Access Point.

Hi LaPastanague,

actually, now that I have the setup with the (2013) Airport Extreme acting in "DHCP (no NAT)" mode is running for some hours the issue got worse: now all (Wireless) devices are requesting DHCP leases from both the Airport AND the router and the DHCP log is full with duplicate lease notifications, so that underlines my suspicion that the Airport does not handle DHCP (at least the broadcast part of it) correctly.

I can motivate my opinion if you like:

- You're focussing on speed: I don't have a speed issue at all (I'm aware it drops due to the mesh nature of repeating). With the repeater setup both speed and coverage are fine for normal use.

- The extended Wi-Fi setup is needed temporarily as long as I don't have a cable available in the location where the repeater is located, there's no other way at this time.

- I need it extended because I live in an old brick house with a high level of iron used in the bricks, as well as steel reinforcement throughout the house and aluminum insulation under the wooden floors. If I walk around the corner from where the 2013 Airport Access Point is Wi-Fi signal drops from 100% to 70% already.

- There is no use in factory resetting a Meraki since it is cloud managed and it also doesn't have Wi-Fi (it's an MX-60). Apart from that the router is not the cause of the DHCP issues since other routers I have laying around here (Netscreen, Juniper, Draytek) show the same behavior.

That leaves factory resetting both Apple Airports again with everything detached which I've done a couple of times already to no avail.

Ah... now I see where you're coming from. That latency impact indeed sounds viable, were it not that the issue is between a wired device (Apple TV) and the repeater itself. Also, DHCP should be able to cope with such events.

I set the 2 AE's up with static IP's yesterday, no DHCP. The Apple TV should get a reserved IP via the Meraki (via DHCP). Now this morning I still see the IP conflicts arise every hour mentioning the repeater as a DHCP client claiming the IP of the Apple TV. Since I set the repeater to static I still stand with my view that the broadcast forwarding of the Airport is faulty because I don't see any other way this can occur.

And yes, the Meraki fixes the issue internally but still logs the conflict (as it should).

So for now I guess I'll just need to speed up getting my cable through the building to get this 'fixed'.

Does any of you know how to file a bug report with Apple?

Hi Spatspock315,

good to hear I'm not the only one with these issues. With Juniper, Netscreen and Draytek router the issues are still there though, although not as common and persistent as with the Meraki (but then, I only used those for testing and am running the Meraki fulltime so have no real comparison). The issues pop up also between other wired/wireless "pairs" (like a Mac Mini and Macbook Pro for example) sometimes.

That said, I don't mind starting a discussion on Meraki side as well. Everything helps :-)

Hi Ken4321,

I never heard of that 'feature' and it took me some time to determine if this indeed was the cause but it sure looks like it; sniffing broadcasts for source MAC's confirms it.

I managed to circumvent the log flooding a bit by extending the DHCP lease time to 1 week (max) in the Meraki dashboard but that's all I can do about it so I'll just need to accept this side-effect I guess.

Thanks for you pointing me in the right direction!