Large campus network: best practices for Airplay (+ issues with lots of Apple TV's)

[pieter_schepens]

We have a large campus network: ZoneDirector ZD1200, ± 50 AP's R500 and R510, ± 100 Apple TV's, lots of iPads (1:1 and shared iPads). The Apple TV's and iPads are on the same SSID, but in small VLAN's/subnets. The backbone of our network has high performance. WiFi speed and reliability are perfect.
We use AirPlay mirroring to the Apple TV's to cast the screen of the teachers iPads to the projector or TV screen. We don't use Bonjour Gateway. From time to time, we experience drop outs or lag in the Airplay streaming. 

We'd like to know, when configuring a WiFi network for AirPlay with lots of Apple TV's:

• What are the best WLAN settings?
• What are the best settings for things like self healing, background scanning, load balancing, etc...?
• What are the best settings for the AP's?
• Any other best practices to make AirPlay reliable?

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[fghzuio]

So your Solution was having the iPads in SSID1 and the AppleTVs an SSID2 and then forcing them not to use the Ruckus Wifi but instead only pull internet via ruckus and screenshare via peer-to-peer Wifi?

I'm curious: why you didn't at least connect the AppleTVs via ethernet?

Channels 149 and 153 sound legit for Apples Wifi direct solution in peer-to-peer:
https://help.apple.com/deployment/ios/#/apdc92e93853

[francis_aromin]

Yes, basically.  Student and teacher devices are on a 802.1x SSID, separating them to their proper VLANs.  

From what I recall, if AppleTVs are wired, screen mirroring goes through the network and not via peer-to-peer Airplay.  Since everyone's in their respective VLANs, they won't be able to discover the AppleTVs.  We didn't want to add the complexity of bonjour gateways just to get around that.

[fghzuio]

yes, that of course makes sense - if true, which is always hard to tell without documentation by apple. Thanks for clarifying!

[eightohtwoeleve]

The downside to this is you're creating another SSID which could impact performance for other SSID since it uses Management, Control frames.

[fghzuio]

Good point, but for up to 4 or 5 SSIDs the impact is not too big. As I recall it the Airtime Usage with ac SSIDs is about 3% per SSID.

But I don't broadcast the AppleTV SSIDs anyway, since I don't want anyone who shouldnt know to be able to mess with my screensharing SSID - I have had that in an event a couple of years ago and the result was not very funny - at least for the customer...