Airplay not working
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Hi There are two Asus wireless access points connected to a 48 port switch along with a load of other things, they are both set to be a simple AP pointing back to the router.
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Well what would that have to do with pfsense then??
You stated they are on the same segment.. Pfsense has nothing to do with this traffic.. Are you doing any sort of isolation on your AP? So all the devices your trying to access via AP are wired? Or also wireless?
Which AP are you connected to when stuff works or doesn't work, etc..
BTW AP don't point anywhere… They take wireless traffic an put it on the wire, and take wired traffic and send it out the wireless.. They don't do any pointing to anything.
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Well ok, my wording was off and for that I shall go outside and self flagellate :)
I do not know how airplay works, I read around the web to turn off IGMP snooping if there is issues, so I naturally assumed that the router was in some way connected, but if you say its not, then I guess its not.
I shall continue my investigations
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Yeah, that's all local to the same network, doesn't touch or have anything to do with the firewall.
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OK, but I thought PFSense was a router? Sorry if I need to get my coat, but I put PFsense in and it replaced my Asus router and does a stirling job so if you are telling me it is fact not a router I need to know whats routing on my lan lols.
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router/firewall, just a matter of terminology. It's more correct to refer to as a firewall in that context, but consumer grade "routers" have ingrained router there in some.
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OK. So presumably with my airplay devices being both wired and wireless, surely the router plays a parr somewhere?
For instance I installed Avahi, however int he set up it says for me to choose which interface are NOT to be used. However LAN is in there and I am not able to touch or adjust this.
Is that correct? (actually that was just a general question, I have not assumed Avahi has anything to do with airplay its always been installed but perhaps is not actually achieving much)
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Routing only occurs between different IP subnets. Everything involved in your network is the same broadcast domain, same IP subnet, hence everything talks directly between the source and destination and doesn't touch the gateway/router/firewall.
Avahi is only relevant where you have multiple segregated internal networks, it won't do anything for your network. Best to uninstall it since it's unnecessary.
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I do not know how airplay works […]
It works with multicast traffic (mDNS). Not all devices like this. I experienced one home router myself which just just dropped this kind of traffic silently. In my case this also stopped a Canon printer from working which was connected to my wireless LAN.
pfSense has no role in this in your setup.
I suggest you connect everything to your switch (no APs) and check whether Airplay works from and to every device as required (I don't know of a way to do this with an iPhone though). This is to exclude problems with Airplay itself. If it doesn't work at all (it probably will) go looking for a switch which supports multicast traffic and IGMP(*) snooping. If there is a problem with only one device (probably not) there is a problem with that specific device.
If everything works add back the APs (one by one) and check which of these stop Airplay from working reliably. Replace the defective ones. I can confirm that Apple Airport devices work, BUT they require a Mac to administrate AND in the past Apple dropped support for older Airport devices from newer Mac OS X versions! There are probably other good APs out there.
Hope this helps.
(*) Your switch should have IGMP snooping anyway. Otherwise multicast traffic may flood your wireless LAN and reduce throughput significantly.
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As stated already.. Unless your bridging interfaces on pfsense, it could give rats ass about traffic on that specific segment.. It has NOTHING to do with traffic between devices. It only does something when traffic is sent to it to go somewhere not on that segment.
I think what confuses most home users is they get told their little linksys or asus or whatever consumer device they got at their local computer store is a router… And they plug stuff in to lan port 1 and another thing in lan port 2 and the "router" is doing something.
Its NOT.. Those devices are a combination of technologies.. If you take a look at inner setup of your typical home device its a switch, ap and then yes a simple router and bridge function.
So see attached, while this is a diagram from a wrt, its pretty much the same for all home "routers"
See the lan ports are part of the same switch on the same vlan.. The routing function has nothing to do with traffic between devices on those ports.. Now the wan port is just on a different vlan. And you will notice the AP is tied to the vlan0 in this drawing via a bridge..
I would be more inclined to call them a layer 3 switch vs router.. With your typical router you do not have switch ports, they are all just interfaces. There is a huge freaking difference between routing and switching.. When you see a router with more than couple of ports, they are normally not switch ports.. They are individual interfaces that you can route traffic between.. Sure some people want to bridge them because they think pfsense works like their home router should.. Which is not the case.. Switching at layer 2 is not the same thing as routing at layer 3. And you will never see the performance you would with bridging that you would with actual switch ports.
If you want devices to be on the same network, you do not bridge interfaces on your router - not if you want performance.
When it comes to airplay, pfsense has ZERO to do with the devices talking to each other on the same layer 2/3 network.. Unless you have bridged something in pfsense like your AP to your switch pfsense could be unplugged and off and devices wouldn't care unless they want to get off the layer 3 network they are on - this is when they talk to pfsense.
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A good explanation.
For the archive (not the OP's problem anyway):
Those devices are a combination of technologies.. If you take a look at inner setup of your typical home device its a switch, ap and then yes a simple router and bridge function.
So see attached, while this is a diagram from a wrt, its pretty much the same for all home "routers"
True for many but unfortunately not for all "home routers". The device I was talking about just did not work this way (which cost me a lot of time to fine out). I had Airplay devices connected to different "switch ports" on my "home router" but they would not work together. If the "home router" would have been built the way shown in the diagram it would not have filtered multicast traffic.
The devious thing I'm talking about was a Speedport (from Deutsche Telekom). This device btw. was the ultimate reason I finally ended up using pfSense. ;D
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Very true.. Some isp device might have filters put in place.. But seems odd that they would filter multicast traffic between switch ports. But possible they might of done that between the wifi and the wired..
Not a fan of any of the devices where you put multiple technologies into one box.. Switch should be your switch, wifi should be AP(s) connected to your switch ;) and your router/firewall should be just that your firewall/router. This way you don't run into any inconsistencies to how things work like a switch blocking multicast unless you specifically set it to do that, which any decent smart/managed switch would allow you to do.
For example I have a low end smart netgear switch that allows you to enable igmp snooping, but can not limit or pick which ports that is enabled on etc. Its either on or off for everything. While my cisco switch gives me full control over stuff like that.
