5.7.0.3 problem-- AirPlay mirroring non-functional on same access point

[tschaps]

Anyone planning to use Apple TV's (small Roku-type devices, for those who don't know) to mirror the screens of iPads, iPhones, and laptops, the latest update breaks this functionality if the two devices are connected to the same radio of the same AP.

I have spent a lot of time testing this while preparing to rollout out Apple TVs on MSM765zl/MSM430/MSM460 (60+ APs) school network to work with teacher iPads to mirror the screen and stream video. This uses a protocol called AirPlay, and it worked great up until the update, and no settings have changed.

Now what appears to happen is that the iPad can find the Apple TV (which means that Bonjour discovery packets are getting passed between wireless clients properly), and then you can tap to mirror the screen, but on the display or projected image, nothing happens, and it eventually times out. I have also tried this on a Mountain Lion-equipped MacBook with the same results. 

If I walk down the hallway, as soon as my iPad associates to a new AP, the mirroring will work as expected (and it's nothing specific to this AP, have tried this by moving equipment over the building, works the same everywhere). Then, if I walk back to near the Apple TV, as soon as the iPad jumps to the same AP, the screen mirroring freezes, then times out and disconnects. 

I don't believe this is multicast filtering related, as the Bonjour discovery would not work as well as it does. It appears the port(s) which are needed to start the mirroring session are now blocked between wireless clients on the same radio (and the APs are set to allow ALL traffic on the VSC in question). But it has something to do with traffic between clients on the same radio, not AP--- an iPad or iPhone 4 on Radio 2 (2.4 Ghz) *can stream fine* via AirPlay to an Apple TV connected to Radio 1 (5 Ghz) on the same AP. 

Though we are planning to hard-wire the Apple TVs with ethernet as much as possible to minimize bandwidth, we need this to work as it used to for those cases that no ethernet is available. It makes me also wonder what other traffic has been blocked in the latest update that might come back to haunt later. 

If anyone has the ability to test this on your system, or particularly if you have not updated to 5.7.0.3 but plan to and have an Apple TV to test this, you'll want to check it again after the update. You need to use the controller web interface to make sure your devices are connected to the same APs for accurate testing results. Any comments/ideas/relevant experience are welcome. 

I do plan to open a case, but I hardly have time right now to type this (while eating lunch), much less fart around with HP support on the phone. 

Thanks 

[tschaps]

To update on what I did to troubleshoot this, I reverted one of my MSM430's to autonomous mode (still at 5.7.0.3, obviously) and recreated the configuration, and I verified that Airplay mirroring also does not work on an AP in autonomous mode. Then I reverted the firmware in just that AP to 5.5.3.0-01 and recreated the configuration again, and I confirmed that Airplay worked fine on that version. I am not able to find the version 5.7.0.2 I had installed on the system previous to 5.7.0.3, and I think I deleted it, thinking I'd never need it again. However, I know from much testing and usage by many people here over the past 3-4 months that Airplay had no problems whatsoever until I upgraded the wireless controller (and, therefore, AP's) from 5.7.0.2 to 5.7.0.3.

Still hoping someone out there can verify this. I think I have enough data points to open a case, maybe if I have time this week-- 

[SHawkins]

Anecdotally,  I think one of my clients has the same problem with 5.7.0.3.

We haven't taken the steps you did, which were absolutely great troubleshooting steps, but they saw basically the same thing.

Please, absolutely get a case open with HP.  This needs to be looked at deeper, as it would help a lot of us.

[SHawkins]

A thought on a possible workaround - please try it if you're willing and let me know the results

Under AP configuration, turn off igmp proxy.
Ideally also configure your switches with igmP turned on, on every vlan on every switch in your network, with at least one device with igmp on also having an ip in each vlan so it can query the multicast group.

I'd bet $1 this might fix it

[SHawkins]

P.S. I am assuming you're *not* tunneling your traffic back to the controller.

[tschaps]

---

@SHawkins wrote:
...Under AP configuration, turn off igmp proxy.
Ideally also configure your switches with igmP turned on, on every vlan on every switch in your network, with at least one device with igmp on also having an ip in each vlan so it can query the multicast group.

I appreciate the try, but no cigar. First off, as far as I can tell, AP's in autonomous mode do not have the "IGMP Proxy" setting, and this issue happens just the same whether the AP is in controlled mode or autonomous. "IGMP Snooping" is an option on both, I tried turning if off in autonomous mode, no change. I did go to the controller IGMP Proxy setting (actually found on mine under "Team: (name)" -> Network) and confirmed it is actually off, since our vendor set this up without using the Internet interface and we don't tunnel traffic to the controller, there's no upstream or downstream traffic to be proxied. 

In any case, the only sure thing which makes Airplay mirroring work is downgrading the firmware to 5.5.3. Instantly on reboot, it all works again as inspected. Upgrade again to 5.7.0.3, Airplay no work. 

Another reason I am sure that the controller settings are not relevant is that this is really an issue of traffic on a single radio (within an IP which may have multiple radios). I have two networks on my test AP, "Airplaytest2.4" and "Airplaytest5G" on the same subnet. Airplay mirroring between two devices, one of them on each radio of the test IP, works just fine, as expected. Only when the Apple TV and other device (be it an iPad, iPhone 4S or Mac running Mountain Lion) are on the *SAME* SSID on the *SAME* radio does the failure to communicate occur.  And as before, multicast traffic seems to be fine, the devices can see the Apple TV via Bonjour, but unicast traffic between them is blocked, so they can't connect. If I disallow traffic between all clients on the VSC, then they can't even see the Apple TV via Bonjour, so this is not the same as using that setting.

As for the switch setting, this traffic does not make it back to the switch, the traffic between clients on the same radio should go right back out wirelessly and not even hit the wired network. However, IP IGMP is enabled n all switches and relevant subnets, as we have a lot of Apple equipment which uses Bonjour to find network resources.

Any more ideas? :)

Thanks

[tomlinsonk48867]

I am experiencing the same issue. 

[ISoliman]

mmm When you mentioned that this traffic is not working between clients in the same SSID I thought about the option under the VSC that allows and denies traffic between the clients, please check this setting, I remember reading that they changed the behavior in 5.7 so it is worth checking but I don't remember where I read that :D

[tschaps]

---

@ISoliman wrote:

When you mentioned that this traffic is not working between clients in the same SSID I thought about the option under the VSC that allows and denies traffic between the clients, please check this setting, I remember reading that they changed the behavior in 5.7 so it is worth checking but I don't remember where I read that :D

---

Thanks-- but it has been checked and double-checked. I have tried both settings on the controller and also on an AP in autonomous mode. There is a difference, though, actually, I think I wrote in one of these posts, but maybe not: using 5.7.0.3, if clients on the same radio *ARE* allowed to communicate, multicast traffic between them works, but they cannot ping each other. If no communication is allowed, then truly, there is no ping and no multicast traffic, and we do not use that setting anywhere except on our guest network.

[AnilGuptaAtHP · Accepted solution]

Try changing the VSC QoS settings to VSC-based Normal for now, and that should work. A bug has been logged on this, will be fixed.

[tschaps]

Thanks, I got this too late Friday to try it, but I will first thing on Monday.

[edbas]

Just for general knowledge the fix suggested by AnilGuptaAtHP works. Just did the change in a client's implementation and it fixed the Airplay issue.

[tschaps]

Yes, it seems to work for me, too. I marked this as "solved," but only because "temporary workaround was provided" is not an option. I very much appreciate the tip, and I do hope it is fixed properly very soon.

Thx

[IVBrave]

Hey guys, I found it interesting to find that others are having a situation so similar to mine. I am also running a 765zl with 460 WAPs on 5.7.0.3. We have apple tv's in our classrooms but mine were acting a little different. The ipads could see and mirror to the apple tv's so long as they were on the same WAP. If the ipad or apple tv decided to connect to a different WAP then the apple tv's airplay could no longer be seen. I tried some of the fixes in this post but nothing changed what could be seen on each WAP. My guess was that there was something blocking the broadcast/multicast traffic that the apple tv spits out but I have not found a fix yet. Anyone else have a similar issue?

[tschaps]

under controlled APs-> Configuration-> Multicast

Do you have "IGMP snooping helpers" enabled?

You may need to enable IGMP or "multicast filtering" on all switches in the mix, too. 

[JesseR]

Agree with tschaps on that.

I also make sure that my wireless VLANs have "ip igmp" enabled in the switch configuration too. 

[IVBrave]

I am still having the same issue of having airplay only work if the ipad and appletv are connected to the same exact WAP. IGMP snooping is enabled and I enabled IGMP on all my switches. Any other good ideas? Thanks for looking!

Edit: I also tried tweaking the QoS settings to no avail

[tschaps]

I would set up a special VSC for each radio on the 460's, such as "AirplayTest5G" and "AirplayTest2.4G" and restrict each one to one of the radios but both on the same vlan. You should also create a separate Controlled AP Group with those VSCs so you only need to sync one radio, and then you know that if you connect two devices to the AP, one to each radio,  you're only dealing with one AP. You can then experiment with a variety of settings, but mainly, you can ascertain whether the mirroring only works between two devices on the same AP or just the same radio. In my case, mirroring worked if Apple TV and iPad were connected to the two different radios in the same IP, but not if connected to the same radio (either one). 

If everything works as expected regardless of which radio combination, you can be pretty sure that it's not a controller/AP setting; it must be something in your wired network not passing on multicasts between the wired network and AP/wireless. You could then experiment with connecting the Apple TV to the wired network (which I advise to do in any case for long term success) to see if that makes a difference. 

Also, see free app "Bonjour Browser" for Mac/Windows and its free iOS equivalent called "Discovery" which enable you to see Bonjour service advertisements, which can be very useful in troubleshooting.

Good luck

[IVBrave]

That also brings me to another issue. You mentioned having the appletvs hard wired. My original plan was to have the appletvs be wired while the ipads wireless. I wasn't sure how that would work with bonjour being that they would be on different subnets. How did you get that to work?

[tschaps]

The eventual plan is multiple subnets to break up the broadcast domain with a Bonjour gateway or router of some type making the Apple TV / Airplay announcements go on all subnets, but for now I just have a VLAN 30 which is for iPads and Apple TVs, and I have a VSC with a wireless network for the same devices which egresses on the same VLAN, wired or wireless.

It's easier than that sounds. 

[gguynes]

We have the same problem.  Curious if you have upgraded to version 5.7.1 which was released just a couple of days ago (November 2, 2012), and if so did that fix the issue?  I will be trying that this evening to see myself.

[gguynes]

Alright, I have applied the QoS setting that was mentioned to no avail.  The upgrade to 5.7.1.0 did nothing.  HP tech support has provided 5.7.1.1 to try while they continue to investigate the issue.

Anyone else have any luck?  Something to try differently?

[tschaps]

5.7.1.0 did fix it for us.

[QuantumDragon]

Hate to drag up a thread, but I'm having a similar issue. I have a MSM430, firmware 5.5.3, and Airplay isn't working. iPad's and MacBook's see that it's available, but mirroring doesn't work. I've tried the suggestions in this post, but it still sin't working...

Any help would be much appreciated.

[SD33Tech]

I have an MSM422 in autonomous mode.  I set the QOS to normal (disabled works too) disabled WMM and disabled the "restrict traffic to default gateway" all in the VSC profile.  this worked for me.

My issues were that there was no mirroring, or that the connection would drop within 30 seconds when mirroring was established.