Avahi daemon interferes with Apple’s HomeKit

[DominikHoffmann]

Thanks to this Reddit post

https://www.reddit.com/r/tradfri/comments/dy8xqx/tradfri_gateway_wont_work_with_mdns_enabled/

I can confirm that the Avahi daemon interferes with HomeKit communication, somehow. With it turned on, it creates a lot of ping chatter between the different devices on my network.

I don’t myself know enough about how the daemon operates or what the HomeKit communication protocol does with Zeroconf to have an answer for why this happens.

[alexeymohr]

@dominikhoffmann I can confirm that this is true for me as well. Extremely disappointing. Any other options besides Avahi for MDNS across subnets on PFSense?

[tman222]

As an alternative, I'd recommend trying udpbroadcastrelay:

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/155698/how-can-i-get-this-udp-relay-package-for-casting-across-vlans

Hope this helps.