iPhone remote app disconnects, iPad does not

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PDJohntony Author

Level 1

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iPhone remote app disconnects, iPad does not

Environment Info

Windows 7 64-bit

iTunes 12.1.2.27

Latest update on iPhone and iPad

Remote app

Single network, single wireless access point

I have home sharing turned on in iTunes, I play my music throughout my entire house from my PC and control via the remote app. I migrated my iTunes library to another PC and I am now having remote issues. Now the remote app frequently disconnects after my phone locks and the only way I can get it to reconnect is by turning off home sharing and back on again. I've made sure to turn off sharing on the other PC, and uninstalled iTunes.

After some testing it seems that the disconnect does not happen on my iPad, only my iPhone. I've gone through the home sharing troubleshooting page, obviously my home sharing is working, just not all the time. I have to turn it off and on again to kick in the head. I've also disabled IPv6 as well.

iPhone 5, iOS 8.3

Posted on Apr 21, 2015 11:52 AM

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Answer 1

zxczz

Level 1

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Apr 26, 2015 8:48 AM in response to PDJohntony

I'm having same problem.

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Answer 2

PDJohntony Author

Level 1

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Apr 26, 2015 9:40 AM in response to zxczz

Hmmm interesting, I'll have to see if I can change that option. This isn't my setup, its a friends.

I may have been running into a different issue. I got down and dirty and pulled out Wireshark to see what was happening and found some interesting things. My friend has two wireless access points and I was wondering if we were running into an issue with WiFi going into sleep mode on the phone and the remote app timeout while waiting for the wireless connection.

I disabled the second AP and things seemed to work better, but the remote would still fail to connect once in a while. Thats when I saw that the remote app makes a DNS SRV request looking for a PC on the network that has iTunes, so I looked at the DNS settings on the iPhone and noticed that DNS was pointing to two ISP DNS servers first, then the internal router DNS. I swapped the internal DNS first, and ISP DNS second, renewed the DHCP lease on the phone and things are working great now.

Either way it seems like the remote app is a bit tempermental with its timeout, it seems like it either gets stuck looking while it waits for WiFi or a DNS response. But at least its working much better now, sorry for the long post.

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