Apple tv 3.2 optimal 5Ghz N router settings

Question

Hi there,
I have been struggling with lag when using apple tv mirroring or extended desktop for months now. Like many others, I am very frustrated that it seems to be impossible to watch movies (either from VLC or popcorn-time or other streaming service) or listen to music (spotify), through airplay without lag in video and/or sound. All devices are located in the same (small room), with very strong signal strengths.
There already is a huge amount of threads in this topic. I have read about every thread, and followed about any tips and tricks I could find on the internet. Most of the tips and tricks come down to disabling bluetooth, and setting up a 5Ghz network. Before I get to my new question, I will provide a brief overview of some of the most important steps that I have taken sofa (for those that are also trying to get this thing working):
1. I setup a seperate 5Ghz network, 20/40Ghz,  using a newly bought dual band wifi router: D-link DIR-860L. Channel 48. Only one other 5Ghz network is around, at channel 36.
2. Turned off the wifi on my wifi-modem, and set DMZ in the modem to the D-links IPadress (192.168.0.1).
3. Enabled IPv4 Multicast streams
4. WMM is enabled (cannot be disabled)
5. Authentication is WPA2-personal
These steps already helped a lot. Occasionally airplay works flawlessly. Unfortunately most of the time it still suffers from unacceptable lag in video and/or audio. Some threads suggest that apple TV works better on the 2.4Ghz, but this is not so in my case, so I would like to continue to tweak the 5Ghz network. Here are some additional things I considered:
1. I noticed that my Macbook achieved a significantly higher bitrate than my Apple TV (435 agains max 150, give or take). I set the 5Ghz network to N only, rather than N/AC because only my MBP would be able to use AC. Since ATV does not support AC, I figured that this would 'cost' apple tv some bitrate. Unfortunately this did not help a lot.
2. I noticed (in the D-link web interface) that if I set the transmission rate to max. 300Mbps, that both my macbook and my apple tv reached 270 mbps. Since this is huge improvement from the 150 mbps that the appleTV reached before, this seemed very promising to me.
Unfortunately with these settings, both my Apple TV and my Iphone 6 are no longer able to connect to the 5Ghz network. My macbook is still able to connect to the network.
So my questions are:
1. Does anyone have any idea why the apple tv and iphone are unable to connect to a 5Ghz N network, when bitrate is set to 300.00 Mb/sec. Is this because Iphone and ATV do not support 300 Mbit/sec? I would assume that this is a 'maximum' setting?
2. Are there any more ideas to optimise these settings? Except for using a wired network, which kind of defeats the purpose of the ATV for me.

Answer 1

Welcome to the Apple Community.
Not sure how much help it is, but there are a few other points you might want to consider.
There already is a huge amount of threads in this topic. I have read about every thread, and followed about any tips and tricks I could find on the internet. Most of the tips and tricks come down to disabling bluetooth, and setting up a 5Ghz network.
I'm not sure what you deem to be a huge amount of threads, but remember this is where people come with their problems, I don't say this for any other reason than to point out that the vast majority of users don't encounter problems and that what ever is causing this for you is almost certainly something that should be able to be fixed at your end of things.
I'm also not sure where you have got the idea that a 5 Ghz network should help, but some have found that disabling bluetooth has helped. Others have also found that disconnecting USB 3 devices has impacted on AirPlay performance. In regard to 5 Ghz, it might help, but it can make things worse too, 2.4 Ghz is certainly more prone to interference, but 5 Ghz is more easily blocked by solid objects.
4. WMM is enabled (cannot be disabled)
Since you mention it, I assume you are aware that WMM is a known cause of problems on some people's set ups.
I'm a little confused about these data rates you are quoting, I think you are quoting the theoretical maximum of the connection, this is nothing like what you can actually expect to achieve. I'm also a bit confused when you say you can get 270 or 300 Mbps Mbps but that the Apple TV is no longer able to connect. If you mean you have set the minimum connection rate to be 270 or 300 Mbps then this will exclude the Apple TV since maximum connection rates depend on hardware and the Apple TV antenna simply can't achieve those rates.
1. If I'm guessing' correctly, it's because it's a minimum rate.
2. You may also find some help on this page, where I’ve collected some of the more unusual solutions to network issues. When making adjustments to your network for better optimisation, you may find some of the points mentioned on this page helpful.