Posts

Apple TV Services

Image
I've been taking a look at the Bonjour protocol in general recently due to some requirements I have been looking at for customers. The availability of Bonjour gateways from the likes of Cisco and Aerohive certainly make things a lot easier to provide access to Bonour services without having to jump through lots of multicast-over-wireless hoops. One area of particular focus has been Apple TV. It seems to be quite a popular device with execs who want to be able to mirror their iPad on to a meeting room projector. There are some great tools that allow you to browse the services that are available on a network. I have been using  Bonjour Browser for Windows , though other Mac equivalents are also available. When looking at the services available from an Apple TV, I see the following services advertised: _airplay._tcp. _raop._tcp. _sleep-proxy._udp. _touch-able._tcp. _appletv-v2._tcp I was interested to know what each of these services does. So, here it what I've be

Apple iTunes Services

Image
This is just a quick note about some Apple services you may see advertised using mDNS when you are implementing a Bonjour gateway on your wireless network. I've been investigating which services might be visible when the iTunes application is being run on computers that are connected to the wireless network. From my testing, I have only been able to find 2 services you may come across when using iTunes ( this just considers the iTunes application and does not include any other services from Apple TV, printers etc .): _daap._tcp.local. _apple-mobdev._tcp.local. _daap._tcp.local. This service becomes available when you choose the option to share your library on the local network Share library on local network: The service advertisements are generated by the iTunes software on the computer (and hence originate from the computer itself) to be detected by other devices/computers across the network _apple-mobdev._tcp.local. This service becomes visible when the

Useful Win 7 Command for Wireless

Image
This probably falls into that category: " stuff that everyone else already knows, but I don't ", but I thought it was worth jotting down a few notes about. I recently saw someone tweet about the command: " netsh show wlan <various options> ", which I had never heard of before. After having had a look through the command help screens, it seems an incredibly useful command if you want to quickly find out about the wireless networks and the wireless capabilities of a Windows 7 machine you're working on. Much of the information can be found by poking around in various GUI pages, but this command line utility is much quicker to use and gives a greater depth of information. I'll just run through a few useful examples and then leave you to poke about in the help pages yourself if you want to know more. A great way to get a summary of the wireless networks that a Win 7 client can hear is to open a command window (...or a DOS box as I like to call i