Apple TV 4K with HomePod Minis grabs multiple IP addresses with same MAC address
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Hello,
I have an Apple TV 4K and there are a couple HomePod Mini's connected to it. For some reason, the Apple TV grabs three IP addresses when the HomePod Minis are connected. I would like to assign static IP addresses to the three devices so I can manage my firewall rules appropriately but something strange is going on with the 3 devices. The Apple TV is working as expected but not the HomePod Minis.
When the HomePod Minis are NOT connected to the Apple TV (but still connected to my WiFi), I get three unique MAC addresses and I can assign them specific IP addresses as I do for all the other devices in my network. So my Apple TV and each of the two HomePod Minis get their own static IP address as I configured in the DHCP server.
When the HomePod Minis are connected as speakers for the Apple TV, it seems like the Apple TV requests two additional IP addresses using its own MAC address. In pfSense, when I check out the ARP table, I see three entries with the MAC address for the Apple TV. When I check the DHCP leases, one IP is for the Apple TV and it is shown with its actual MAC address. The two other IP addresses show up with seemingly random MAC addresses. One odd thing is that the MAC addresses from the DHCP lease table do NOT match with the MAC addresses for the same two IPs in the ARP table. The IP address assigned to the Apple TV does show the correct MAC address in both the ARP table and the DHCP lease table.
Pulling the plug on the HomePod Minis and allowing them to boot up and reconnect to WiFi produces two new DHCP leases. The MAC addresses shown in the DHCP table are new random MAC addresses. When I search for those two new IP addresses in the ARP table, they are listed but with the MAC address from the Apple TV.
So, my question, is there some way I can assign static mappings for these randomly generate MAC addresses for the HomePod Minis given that they are coming from the Apple TV (MAC address for the Apple TV does not change)? I tried creating static mappings in the DHCP server using entries with the same MAC address as the Apple TV but that didn't work. I see under the Firewall menu there is an item called "Virtual IPs" along with something called "Proxy ARP" but I'm not sure that will help me out. I would like these HomePod Minis to have static IPs somehow. Any ideas?
Thanks :)
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Added a couple screenshots of the DHCP leases and the ARP table:
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@MonkeyJoe
I'd leave it/them grabbing a lease for the extra IPs, at least for now. Killing the lease will have no adverse effects either as they will regenerate as and when.I'm not sure Apple have got a complete grip on the new cleverness, especially keeping the PTPv2 timing active for a currently unused AirPlay session - sending packets for packets sake.
Apple did well keeping almost all of this on direct IPv6 links; no idea why they expanded into IPv4. It seems to have coincided with the precision timing thing... perhaps a bit more sticky than Apple expected.
Now if Siri could actually find any of my playlists, or my Apple Music server, we could get back to normal.
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Yep, I've been leaving the leases alone. I have intermittent issues with Siri not working properly and being very unreliable only on those devices. I suspect since I don't have firewall rules in places for the HomePod Mini IPs, they are blocked from connecting to certain things but without static IPs, I can't do much about it it.
I didn't know about Apple having better success with IPv6. I have blocked all that because I couldn't figure out how to assign static IPv6 leases reliably haha My ISP doesn't support IPv6 yet either but I could play around with it locally at least.
