WLC 5508 Apple Bonjour Service Help

[craig.paolozzi]

Hi All,

A customer of ours has the following access points and wireless lan controllers on site.  They want to use the Apple Bonjour service with Apple TV's and iPads.  I have enabled multicast feature of the 5508 globally and one the SSID.

The Apple TV has an ethernet connection and the iPads connect over the wifi.  The Apple tv is on the same subnet as the iPad's - the Bonjour features do work for approx 5/10 minutes then it stops working for some reason.

The Access Points plug into a Cisco 2960 Layer 2 switch, the 5508 controllers plug are in LAG mode and plug into a Nortel Layer 3 stack which I have enabled IGMP snooping.

I've read that the Apple Bonjour service isnt designed to work on a multi subnet network - but both the Apple TV and iPad are connected on the same subnet.  Sounds like some kind of timeout but not too sure.

Does anyone have any pointers for me?

Wireless Controller - 5508

Access Points - AIR-LAP1142N-E-K9  

[Damon Garner]

Try disabling IGMP snooping, I have seen that cause issues and unable broadcast forwarding. Also be sure if you are using multicast/unicast on the controller that you use a unique multicast address.


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[Stephen Rodriguez]

You shouldn't be using multicast/unicast mode.  You should be using multicast/multicast mode, with a 239.x.x.x address as the multicast address configured on the WLC.  This is the group that the APs will join, and I usually go with

239..  This does require that multicast be configured properly on the LAN side, and the pim is enabled on teh AP VLAN(s), management VLAN, and the client VLAN(s).

You may also need to config network mgmt-via-dynamic-interface enable, as the WLC doesn't really like to 'bridge' subnets.

Now, if you can't get multicast/multicast to work, and multicast/unicast does, that points to a multicast configuration issue.  Unicast mode sends the multicast packet as a unicast packet to all the AP, so if you have a lot of AP you can cause latency.  Multicast mode, sends one packet to the configured multicast group.

HTH,
Steve

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[craig.paolozzi]

Thanks for replying.

Its setup as multicast multicast mode. WLC has a ulticast addres which ive set to 239.1.1.1.

Bonjour service/ AirPlay does actually work - but it doesnt work on some ipads unless you reboot the iPad.

Broadcast forwarding is disabled

[Stephen Rodriguez]

it wouldn't hurt to enable broadcast forwarding.  the wlc uses the configured multicast mode to send the broadcasts, so it's not too intensive if you are multicast/multicast.

HTH,
Steve

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[Saravanan Lakshmanan]

it is suggested to start trying something simple.

#Have AP connected to Management vlan of WLC.

#Keep both Multicast server and client on WLAN that's mapped to management vlan of wlc.

see if it works as expected, if so then move the server to wired side on WLC's vlan.