Level 1

57 points

AppleTV 3 floods DHCP when ethernet connected

I am hoping others can open a case with Apple for this, you may not be aware this is happening.

The AppleTV 3 with 7.0.2 or 7.0.3, and connected via ethernet will (may?) flood your network with DHCP request. That is, it makes a DHCP request every 2-6 seconds instead of once or so a day. This does not happen if connected via wifi. I have a log sent by my router (Zyxel) once a day and prior to the ATV 3 it was 1 page long, now it is 50 pages long! 99 percent of it is the ATV 3 sending DHCP requests. If you don't have a way of monitoring your network you may notice this is happening so you'll need to log/monitor this to see it. If you have the problem please open a case with Apple as I have done since Apple Feedback does not help fix thing in a timely fashion. My understanding is that this was known and fixed in 7.0.3 but only for wifi connections. I have the house wired for cat 6 and want ethernet for our primary ATV 3.

This does not happen to our ATV 3s connected via wifi and our older Apple TV 2s.

Posted on Feb 13, 2015 12:18 PM

Top-ranking reply

Mario MG Author

Level 1

57 points

Posted on Feb 15, 2015 10:29 AM

To open a case got to http://www.apple.com/support/contact/ it's free and easy, they call back in minutes, you will then have to convince the first level person to send you to a "specialist" who will document your issue and send it to engineering, enough of us complain and they will notice. I have sent them logs and even port mirroring traces, I spent several days on this. The trace and logs clearly show the problem. BTW, even though DHCP requests are flooding it gets the same address each time. Another really odd thing I found which may explain AirPlay problems (I have them) it that the ATV 3 actually shows up in the trace with TWO IP addresses! One floods and the other shows up a lot but led frequently. I sent Apple the trace to prove it.

BTW, most people won't see/notice this because they don't have router logs. Also, I have an HP switch that allows port mirroring so I can monitor all network traffic to/from the ATV 3 using Wireshark (I used Linux but it works on Mac).

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53 replies

RWP123

Level 1

4 points

Feb 15, 2015 3:19 PM in response to RWP123

Thank you so much! You are absolutely correct. I was having a problem using Airplay from my Mac Mini (late 2012) to my AT3 while both were connected by ethernet. I could get sound but only a grey screen on my TV. I tried everything I could think of to correct it, but nothing worked. I checked all the forums, but yours is the first solution I have seen. I changed the AT3 to wifi and now everything is back the way it was.

My iPad and iPhone continued to have access to Airplay, only the Mini had problems.

What is the easiest way to open a case with Apple?

Don't they check their updates before they release them?

Mario MG Author

Level 1

57 points

Feb 16, 2015 9:37 AM in response to Willie Strickland

First of all, I don't want static and reserving an address does not help since the ATV is triggering this no matter what the router does. t is an ATV bug that does not happen on older ATVs. Secondly, the ATV is not supposed to have 2 addresses when wifi was never activated. The second address is not supposed to show up on ethernet even it is was active (but you can't activate both interfaces on an ATV anyway). I have been doing networking for 30 years so I know a little about how thing are supposed to work and this is a bug in the ATV 3 software that needs to be fixed. Still waiting to hear back from Apple on the case.

jjkraw

Level 2

455 points

May 1, 2015 12:23 PM in response to Mario MG

I just stumbled upon this thread and as an owner of three ATVs, all Ethernet wired, I've never seen this (and just looked at both the router and took a WireShark trace and do not see it happening right now). So, a few questions:

1) Does this happen with the ATV in a particular state (sleep, up but not running an app, running any particular app) or all of the time?

2) What is the time frequency of the DHCP Discover messages from the ATV?

3) What is the DHCP lease time as configured on the router?

Probably more questions after these, but it is a start. Just want to see if I can re-create it to get more info.

fyellin

Level 1

0 points

Jul 29, 2015 9:56 AM in response to chris from TW

I never connected my Apple TV to WiFi. According to my router logs, the ATV is renewing its ethernet lease every ten minutes, even though my lease time is 7 days.

Admittedly, this isn't the flooding of the network that others are seeing, but it's still more DHCP activity than the rest of my thirty devices combined. Even portable devices like my phone aren't asking as frequently. It's making it hard for me to find real problems in my logs.

Apple knows how to write a network stack. Why have they failed here?

GThielen

Level 1

0 points

Aug 4, 2015 9:40 AM in response to Mario MG

I have been having this same problem for a long time. A few more details to add:

I have 2 Apple TV 2s connected via Ethernet cable, 2 older Apple TV 3s connected via Ethernet cable, and a brand new Apple TV 3 connected via WiFi. I also have a static DHCP reservation set up in my router for all of the Apple TVs.

The Apple TV2s do not have the DHCP "flooding" issue and seem to always show up in the iOS Remote app or iTunes as Airplay devices.

The wired Apple TV 3s do have the DHCP flooding issue and frequently do not show up in the Remote app or iTunes as Airplay devices.

The WiFi Apple TV3 is very new but so far no issues (same as Apple TV 2s).

I believe at least one of the older Apple TV 3s has the serial number range that Apple was replacing because of a bad firmware update (or something like that), but of course I didn't know about their extended replacement policy regarding these units until it was too late to take advantage of it.

I'm going to try swapping one of the wired ATV 3s with the brand new WiFi unit to see if the new one has this same problem.

satcomer

Level 4

1,593 points

Feb 15, 2015 11:15 AM in response to Mario MG

If I were you I would go into the router settings and give the IP of the AppleTV and give it a DHCP Reservation, this might help.

BX52

Level 1

0 points

Feb 18, 2015 2:03 PM in response to Drew Reece

I have the same problem.

I recently moved from a commercial router to a custom build Linux router and now i can see the stream of DHCP requests from ATV3 in my logs.

Ever since I switched my ATV3 to use Ethernet instead WiFi I started to have issues; mainly that airplay would not wake up ATV3 anymore and i had to manually start ATV and then connect via airplay which i never had to do when the thing was using wifi.

Obviously there are workarounds: use wifi or the static IP, but that is not the point and I am with Mario on this one. ATV3 should work just like anything Ethernet connected ,and the fact that this issue was reported to Apple and nothing is happening tells me that they don't care. They probably have enough customers that do not look into this kind of detail. If the customer doesn't know there is a problem then there is no problem right?!

Mario MG Author

Level 1

57 points

Feb 18, 2015 3:14 PM in response to BX52

BX52, I also have the ATV 3 not waking problem, but only on ethernet, see my post Apple TV 3 Will Not Wake Up , the Apple Remote app and Roomie will not wake up ATV 3, fine with ATV 2. Also, I just talked to Apple today and sent them info about people also having Airplay issues mentioned on this thread.

Please please please open a case with Apple about the DHCP issue. Thanks! https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action

May 1, 2015 9:05 AM in response to Mario MG

Thanks for this, Mario. I was looking at my router logs for a completely different reason, and noticed that our AppleTV (not sure of rev - it's probably a 2) was requesting a new lease every minute or two. For me, the workaround of switching it to WiFi was the easy choice. No more DHCP flooding now.

Jul 7, 2015 12:01 PM in response to Mario MG

I'm having the same issue. My dhcp lease time is set for 24H, but the apple tv asks for a new lease about once a minute.

Logs:

Jul 7 11:40:41 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:41:54 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e

Jul 7 11:41:54 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:43:06 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e

Jul 7 11:43:06 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:44:18 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e

Jul 7 11:44:18 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:45:30 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e

Jul 7 11:45:30 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:46:16 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPINFORM(br0) 192.168.1.208 fc:aa:14:72:37:b0

Jul 7 11:46:16 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.208 fc:aa:14:72:37:b0 blackbox

Jul 7 11:46:42 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e

Jul 7 11:46:42 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:47:54 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e

Jul 7 11:47:54 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:49:05 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e

Jul 7 11:49:05 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:50:41 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e

Jul 7 11:50:41 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.1.206 1c:1a:c0:79:29:9e Apple-TV

Jul 7 11:51:20 unknown daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[531]: DHCPINFORM(br0) 192.168.1.200 4c:0b:be:0b:a5:a0

Mario MG Author

Level 1

57 points

Feb 15, 2015 10:33 AM in response to Willie Strickland

This is a DHCP flooding problem so DHCP would not be used if the ATV 3 had a static address. I have 45+ IP addresses in my house so static IPs are not practical and too much work if/when I change something.

benji888

Level 1

18 points

Feb 15, 2015 8:37 PM in response to RWP123

"I was having a problem using Airplay from my Mac Mini (late 2012) to my AT3 while both were connected by ethernet. ... I changed the AT3 to wifi...."

This is not a solution, just a workaround.

I have my (mid 2010) MacBook Pro and ATV3 connected via ethernet to my router, iOS devices over wifi and they can all airplay to the apple tv, also home sharing iTunes works fine. You should be able to airplay from your Mac Mini to the apple tv using ethernet connection with apple tv & mac. You should also be able to access your computer's iTunes library from the ATV3 if you have home sharing enabled.

The first thing I would try is unplugging the ATV (power). The ATV only goes to sleep unless you either manually restart it or unplug it. I would also try, on your Mac, sign out of iCloud, sign back in...this can solve some connectivity issues with Macs. The problem is somewhere between the mac & the apple tv. In fact, now that it works over wifi, if your ethernet cables are still hooked up, try turning wifi off on the mac and use wired connection for the atv, it might work, electronics are strange this way.

Mario MG Author

Level 1

57 points

Feb 16, 2015 9:48 AM in response to Willie Strickland

Forgot to mention, it always gets the same adress even if I power off/on, and the second address that pops up stays the same. Only time it the address might change is if I power off both the ATV and router, but the ATV just continues to flood. Hope this helps others trying to get Apple to fix this. Again, if you are using ethernet and have a way to see this problem please open a case. It's not like it's sending a lot of data but it can affect network performance since the network is constantly active and your router has to handle the requests continually without ever stopping.

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Feb 16, 2015 2:20 PM in response to Mario MG

Mario MG wrote:

Please folks, no more static advice, as I previously stated, setting static turns off the DHCP requests in the ATV so the flooding does not happen, but that is not what I want.

You have just posted a potential workaround for other users, which was all I was asking for, thanks.

You have made it clear static is not an option for you, but for every other ATV user it might help.

jjkraw

Level 2

455 points

Jul 29, 2015 3:14 PM in response to Brian Cook4

This DHCP behavior isn't universal, however. I have three ATVs that are all several hours into their 12-hour leases without misbehaving.

There have also been several reports here of the Bonjour Proxy in the ATV being broken (see this post).

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AppleTV 3 floods DHCP when ethernet connected