WLC 5508 Apple Bonjour Service Help

craig.paolozzi · ‎10-23-2012

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

fbarboza · ‎10-23-2012

Hi by default the WLC do not have multicast enable and bonjour works with multicast.

If the access points are on the same subnet as the WLC then you just need to enable multicast on the WLC, enable broadcast forwarding, IGNMP snooping , set the multicast group and under the WLAN enable multicast.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/hw/wireless/ps4570/products_tech_note09186a0080bb1d7c.shtml

If the access points are on a different subnet then the WLC then you will need to enable multicast on the WLC and also layer 3 multicast between the WLC subnet and the Access point subnet.