How can I figure out why my Apple TV drops connection when using AirPlay
Hi – I have a really frustrating issue with my Apple TV(s). I have two of them, and several iOS devices, and this issue exists for all combinations.
The issue: I'll be streaming something in Safari, YouTube App, etc. and AirPlay it to my TV. It works fine for awhile, but then all of a sudden, the video will stop playing. On my iOS device, I get a message that says the connection has been dropped (or something along those lines).
Like I said, I have this issue on both Apple TVs. One is hardwired to the router, and one is operating via WiFi. At this point, I have to believe that it's something happening on my network causing packet loss.
My main question is how to troubleshoot this issue. Anyone have any idea where I can get some sort of log from the Apple TV, or perhaps the iOS device? I could go through my router settings and just guess at stuff (which I already did) to try to improve network quality, but I really need to be able to narrow down what the issue is.
Any insight on how to troubleshoot this issue would be much appreciated. Thanks!
There are multiple tools available on your Mac.
open Console and look around the time stamp of the event (lost connection) to see what is it reporting.
Use Ping to test the connection speed and stability
Apple TV: Go to the Settings menu on Apple TV, select General > Network -note the IP address (you will need it later).
- Start Network Utility
Ping your Apple TV IP, you might want to run a continuous ping to see if it changes significantly over time.
Read more "how to" here:
Testing TCP port connectivity between computers and devices
One of the issues I had with AirPlay was very similar to yours, and it was solved by changing my wifi router.
Buscar's suggestions are great - try them and see if they give you any useful diagnostics. (please post a comment to tell us what you found.) I've personally found that tweaks to the router settings rarely yielded more than a bit more time before the same failure would occur again (including trying to locate interference-free channels etc.).
A way to test this in hardware may be borrowing a higher-quality router from someone for a few hours to see if that helps. In my case, after weeks of software/router tweaking, changing from a cheap Belkin router to a Netgear wnr2000v (a friend's) caused all the problems to vanish - none of my devices lose connection anymore.
You did mention that one of your Apple TV's is cabled to the router. However, I imagine you're still streaming from a computer over Wifi. In either case, it's also possible that the router doesn't handle long streams of data even over the cable...