Apple TV 4K - Ethernet constantly connects/disconnects while in sleep mode

I have this same log spamming behavior going on with 2 Apple TVs, one on a Cisco 3650-X switch that has PoE, and one connected to a non-PoE Cisco 2960S switch. I've played around with disabling power settings. Setting speed & duplex etc. No impact whatsoever.

Apple TV perpetually enables it's NIC, put's it's MAC address on the switch (presumably checking it's DHCP lease, and probably doing some bonjour or air play checks etc), and then shuts the NIC off shortly after.

I filed a Radar with Apple as a bug. There's no excuse for this network noise.

Andy,

I have the same problems as you described. I did everything you did, Andy, plus I configured my cisco switch interface to be either auto negotiate the speed/duplex and hard coded them to 1Gig/Duplex and still have the problem. I even set the apple TV to sleep never, but it still goes to sleep and floods my syslog server with all these flapping interface messages. I bought this 4K TV to replace the previous apple tv. I just swapped them, so the new one was using the same cable and switch port as the old one. The old one didn’t have this issue, so my cable and switch port is fine.

I already took one back to the Apple store and they gave me a new one. I thought it was just that one device was bad, but the new one they swapped me was doing the same thing. That’s when I did an internet search and found this thread you posted.

I just got off the phone with Apple support after being escalated to Tier 2 only to be told that the engineers don’t tell Tier 2 what they’re working on; Ivan said he’ll escalate it to the engineers so that more people complain about this and it gets attention. Ivan told me to keep checking the Apple Web site for IOS upgrade release notes for anything that fixes this issue. I think this is going to take months to resolve.

That said, I’m still in my 30 day return policy and I’m just going to take this back and get my money and probably connect up my old Apple TV even though its incompatible with 4K. And I just bought a new 4K TV to stream 4K movies. Or, I’ll check out RoKu or Amazon stick or something.

I get the impression ALL of the Apple 4K TV devices are faulty. So take yours back or don’t buy it until they fix it.

I can confirm this is still a problem. I had the problem with the 4th gen, and when I upgraded to 4K model. I switched to a new direct cable and moved ports, problem persists. I have a Cisco SG500X, latest firmware, and it is the only device that floods the log with link up/link down as often as every 30 secs to 3-5 mins. I opened a ticket, uploaded the requested logs, they came back with basically "we see nothing wrong, live with it". Which to be fair, it is just a big annoyance, not a show stopper. For now, I have sleep set to "never" which fixes the issue.

I moved the 4th gen Apple TV to a different room that is connected to a Cisco Catalyst 2960G and a different reciever/TV. The 4th gen unit no longer goes up and down constantly when sleeping. I'm thinking it may have something to do with the HDMI triggering something or some HDMI chatter on the other TV. I guess the next test would be to turn sleep back on and unplug the HDMI then watch the switch log.

I wish they would just fix the bug.

I was told that the best thing to do is to go here, https://www.apple.com/feedback/ , and put in a feature request. Support suggested that if enough people did this then it might get fixed. lol.

Jason

I'm also seeing the exact behavior you described. tvOS 11.1.

I'm okay with having it never sleep to mitigate, but definitely seems like a bug and just annoying if you're one of the few folks watching the log.

Hate to do an "us too" post but we are experiencing this issue with the 4K units when plugged into Ethernet. We have always used Wifi in the past but on these 7 new 4K units we purchased, we decided to go over Ethernet and the network guys are not terribly happy. I currently have an open case with AppleCare Enterprise. I have tried putting two of them on the beta of tvOS 11.2.5 and that hasn't been helpful. I have also tried using a static IP on one of them per AppleCare Enterprise's request and that hasn't worked either. I am going to work with them some more today hopefully. Here's our switch logs if that helps anyone:

Trap logging: level informational, 124860 message lines logged

Logging to 10.xxx.xxx.xxx (udp port 514, audit disabled,

link up),

124813 message lines logged,

0 message lines rate-limited,

0 message lines dropped-by-MD,

xml disabled, sequence number disabled

filtering disabled

Logging Source-Interface: VRF Name:

Log Buffer (4096 bytes):

ace GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:46:35.030: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet3/0/24, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:46:35.544: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/33, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:46:35.942: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:46:37.864: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:46:37.945: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:46:38.868: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:46:42.982: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:46:43.985: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:46:47.823: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:46:48.826: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:46:55.342: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:46:57.348: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:06.387: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:08.387: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:20.935: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/33, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:20.946: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet3/0/24, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:21.949: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/33, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:21.949: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet3/0/24, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:25.189: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet3/0/24, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:25.745: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/33, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:26.193: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet3/0/24, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:26.748: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/33, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:43.069: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:43.069: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet3/0/24, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:43.187: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/33, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:44.068: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:45.071: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet3/0/24, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:45.187: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/33, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:47.906: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:48.906: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:52.985: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:53.985: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:47:57.788: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:47:58.788: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:48:05.548: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:48:07.551: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/18, changed state to up

Jan 17 15:48:16.628: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to down

Jan 17 15:48:18.631: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet5/0/16, changed state to up

I have then exact same problem. Confirmed with my router support group that the issue is with the Apple TV 4K hardware. I don't believe it is a defective unit. I did spend time with Apple support trying to convince them that their firmware needed to be updated to resolve the issue but to no avail. Typical "not our problem" response from Apple. Really arrogant!!!

The only way to get around the problem is to use wifi. Or return the product for a refund.

Hi opragel. Have you reported this to Apple, by posting at link: Feedback - Apple TV - Apple?

Same behavior with a 4th gen ATV. Port is flapping several times /minute same issue on multiple Extreme switches. Only a 100 meg port. Duplex/speed/hard coding of mac addresses/ all fail. Wireless in my case is probably faster than the Ethernet connection but it is just annoying. Please fix.

My Google fiber router is very limited in what I can see but I also have noticed that the AppleTV 4K switches back and forth from 100Mbps to 1Gbps while in idle mode. At the same time I lose connection to the internet even though the router still claims an IP address for the ATV. Sometimes it works to restart the unit. Sometimes I have to unplug the unit from the router then plug it back in. This problem did not occur until I recently switched to 1Gbps internet. Previously it was connected to an Airport Extreme running off 75Mbps cable internet. It is very frustrating and I wish I could find a way to keep this from happening.

Many thanks for posting, blackholemac! It would be great if you shared your progess with AppleCare Enterprise, as this seem to be the most promising way for a fix 🙂

I have the same problem, I have to restart my router every time it happens so it can recognize the Ethernet connection again. Really annoying.

Same here, got a new Apple TV 4K yesterday and woke up to 200+ e-mails from my monitoring system due to port flapping. Seems the port is going up&down every few seconds.

Doesn't this also affect AirPlay availability?

Very short excerpt from my switch log:

Jan 16 05:58:57 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: TRAPMGR: Link Down: 0/6

Jan 16 05:58:57 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: DOT1S: Port (6) inst(0) role changing from ROLE_DESIGNATED to ROLE_DISABLED

Jan 16 05:59:00 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: TRAPMGR: Link Up: 0/6

Jan 16 05:59:00 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: DOT1S: Port (6) inst(0) role changing from ROLE_DISABLED to ROLE_DESIGNATED

Jan 16 05:59:26 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: DOT1S: Port (6) inst(0) role changing from ROLE_DESIGNATED to ROLE_DISABLED

Jan 16 05:59:26 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: TRAPMGR: Link Down: 0/6

Jan 16 05:59:27 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: TRAPMGR: Link Up: 0/6

Jan 16 05:59:27 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: DOT1S: Port (6) inst(0) role changing from ROLE_DISABLED to ROLE_DESIGNATED

Jan 16 06:00:07 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: DOT1S: Port (6) inst(0) role changing from ROLE_DESIGNATED to ROLE_DISABLED

Jan 16 06:00:07 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: TRAPMGR: Link Down: 0/6

Jan 16 06:00:10 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: TRAPMGR: Link Up: 0/6

Jan 16 06:00:10 192.168.***.*** ("US8,f09fc2c6****,v3.9.19.8123") switch: DOT1S: Port (6) inst(0) role changing from ROLE_DISABLED to ROLE_DESIGNATE

I wish I had better to report...AppleCare Enterprise wanted me to give the latest tvOS 11.3 beta 15L5198d a whirl saying that things may have improved. I attempted it and all seemed to work well on a single test unit here for one day. I then extended the test out to our intermediate school and left for a night. It was still flapping in the wind. Checked back on my single test unit and now it's doing the same. Back to the drawing board. This case seems to be moving at a glacial pace so others please escalate as well. The good news is, the rep seemed to reproduce the issue and is also working on it from his end.

By the way, I don't post on here very frequently and when I wrote this, I realized I logged in with a different Apple ID. I'm 'blackholemac'

I can confirm that I have this issue as well. The link status for my Apple TV 4K connected to a Ubiquiti Edgeswitch constantly renegotiates from 100mbps to 1Gbps as well as disconnects/reconnects when sleeping.

This also affects AirPlay. Many times I'll go to AirPlay something to the Apple TV and it wont appear in the list, because the link is down and/or flapping.

Apple - this isn't just something you can just say "deal with it," to, because it is affecting performance.

Same problem here with ATV 4K latest TvOS 11.2.6 connected to D-Link gigabit ethernet switch... Hope Apple will find fix for this issue..