IPhone – AirPlay Music From AirPort Express Dropping Out

airplayairportiphonemacbook pro

My AirPlay music keeps disconnecting. Here's my gear:

  • AirPort Extreme 2013
  • AirPort Express 2012
  • MacBook Air 2013
  • iPhone 4S

And my setup:

  • Extreme is in the living room
  • Express is in the adjacent kids bedroom
  • Express connected to Extreme over WiFi – it does not extend the Extreme's WiFi network

My problems are:

  • The Express' AirPlay icon occassionally disappears from my iPhone
  • When the icon does appear, and I start streaming music to it, the music will stop playing anywhere from 15-30 minutes later. This happens if I stream from my iPhone or MacBook

What can I try to prevent the AirPlay music from dropping out?

Best Answer

I have struggled with a similar issue for about a year now. Under the veil of secrecy, I think that airplay is a solid protocol.

I use an AT&T Arris Gateway for a DHCP server with an Airport Express as a LAN node. Here's what seems to have solved my problem:

Deep inside the configuration pages for my Arris router (Firewall > Advanced) I found a "Flood Limit" option, which was stated to block "bursting new traffic." Essentially, the router was dropping packets after a certain limit had been reached (I believe this is a mechanism against DoS attacks). Disabling this seemed to stop the AirPlay from dropping out.

Long story short, you may have a router that is tampering too much with the packets on your LAN. Go through every setting on your routers/APs. Disable MAC address filtering, make sure these TCP/UDP ports are open, and steer clear of firewall features that are degrading the performance of your network. Also, wired connections between APs really help with streaming.

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