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

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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

fyellin

Level 1

0 points

Jul 30, 2015 9:07 PM in response to jjkraw

> Just curious: When the ATV sleeps and you see the 10-minute DHCP requests, are you able to see the ATV as an AirPlay

> choice on any devices (assuming you have an iSomething that supports AirPlay) and will the ATV wake up on its own if you choose it for AirPlay?

Yes and yes. It takes about three seconds for the ATV to wake up and start mirroring.

Aug 4, 2015 2:39 PM in response to glarbl_blarbl

glarbl_blarbl wrote:

To me, if a networking device is ignoring a setting by orders of magnitude -- then that is a bug.

1. Orders of magnitude more in quality of requests, but still likely 0.0001% of your network bandwidth or less. This is not causing any measurable change in network performance or through put.

2. As already mentioned it is not ignoring the setting, there is some screw ball reason one of Apple's protocols (bonjour, AirPlay, HomeSharing, etc) needs to refresh this frequently. It has likely always worked this way, and there is little chance it is going to change. It does not cause any actual problem so no not a bug or anything to worry about. Especially since you can not do anything to change it.

3. As I and others have already posted if you put a packet sniffer on any network you with find a constant stream of management/over head traffic like this were devices are constantly checking this or that. It is normal and eats up so little bandwidth it does not matter.

Aug 4, 2015 8:04 PM in response to Brian Cook4

Not sure where everyone got the impression that I thought this was affecting my bandwidth. Don't think I ever voiced that concern. I was investigating issues with my ISP connectivity and saw how much traffic the Apple TV was showing in the logs, googled it to find this thread -- and figured I'd post my logs.

I have indeed already submitted a bug report on this. No need to tell me how small these packets are a third time, thanks.

satcomer

Level 4

1,593 points

Feb 16, 2015 1:52 AM in response to Drew Reece

Yea Drew you are using outdated Mac Terminal commands. Learn the OS X command networksetup. So just man networksetup to find some heavy commands.

Jul 30, 2015 9:57 AM in response to glarbl_blarbl

Sorry, 1440x more traffic. That's what I get for trying to do math in my head before coffee.

jjkraw

Level 2

455 points

Jul 31, 2015 3:24 AM in response to fyellin

Thanks for the feedback. I was just trying to see if I could connect the dots between a couple different issues but they seem to be independent. Carry on!

Jul 30, 2017 6:36 PM in response to jjkraw

As an FYI - I have an ATV3 and it is having the constant DHCP request issue. here is a short section of the log.

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.31] to MAC address 98:d6:bb:20:62:bc, Sunday, July 30, 2017 05:53:16

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.31] to MAC address 98:d6:bb:20:62:bc, Sunday, July 30, 2017 05:43:05

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.31] to MAC address 98:d6:bb:20:62:bc, Sunday, July 30, 2017 05:43:03

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.31] to MAC address 98:d6:bb:20:62:bc, Sunday, July 30, 2017 05:33:02

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.31] to MAC address 98:d6:bb:20:62:bc, Sunday, July 30, 2017 05:23:02

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.31] to MAC address 98:d6:bb:20:62:bc, Sunday, July 30, 2017 05:13:02

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.31] to MAC address 98:d6:bb:20:62:bc, Sunday, July 30, 2017 05:03:04

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.31] to MAC address 98:d6:bb:20:62:bc, Sunday, July 30, 2017 05:03:03

It has been going on for many months now and I cannot find a solution except the suggestion for a static IP - which the netgear nighthawk does not to easily support. Apple is supposed to be plug and play for the computer illiterate and should prioritize bugs like this for stability reasons. Lastly - just reset everything and it reloaded new software from Apple and the problem as you se above still exists.

I am an old network guy as well and find allowing this to exist for years is silly.

Thank you.

Jul 31, 2017 3:31 AM in response to AlphaFire

Hi AlphaFire. Are you able to change the DHCP lease duration on your router? I've experienced this with Apple TV 4 and a Netgear 6400 router. It seemed to be due to the router using a lease duration of zero, which is supposed to be interpreted as 24 hours. The Apple TV ethernet implementation seems to treat it as a random, relatively small, value.

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AppleTV 3 floods DHCP when ethernet connected