Apple TV and iTunes not able to see each other

Question

I think I have found a bug in either iTunes or Apple TV. My network configuration is a bit complicated so I will describe it first.
Cable modem into my house hitting a Linksys WRT330N router at a central box in my laundry room. From there my house is hard wired to different rooms of the house. One goes to my office where I have a Apple Extreme N airport, connected to my PowerMac and my iTunes library. Again out of the central point in the laundry room again hard wired I have a wire going to my living room, where I have another Apple Extreme N airport, this is where my Apple TV is hard wired too. I have all the latest firmware and software installed on all my devices. Also both Airport Extreme's are setup using bridge mode and letting the Linksys serve the IP addresses for my network.
Now to the problem. I can not explain when or why but my Apple TV and iTunes are not able to see each other after about 48 hours. I have tried all kinds of troubleshooting steps including changing my connection from being hard wired to wireless connecting directly to the Airport Extreme my iTunes computer is connected too. I know my network connection is good as I can see trailers and pull up video's from uTube.
The only way to get them to see each other again is to do a factory reset of my Apple TV. After I do this they can both see each other again. But again after about 48 hours they lose the ability to see each other. I have taken these steps twice now to fix the problem
I just finished reseting my Apple TV and am going to watch it to see when it stops working the next time.
All of these problems started the other day when I introduced a new Apple Extreme N router in my my network. The airport Extreme seem to be working fine with my PS3 and XBox 360 that is also connected to it. So I don't think it's the router that is causing the problem.
If I had to guess I would say something in the Apple TV is locking up. Although I have tried power cycling the Apple TV which does not fix the problem. I'm going through 3 routers to get between the Apple TV and the iTunes library somehow it appears the Apple TV is losing it way.
I welcome any help as I don't want to have to keep factory resetting my Apple TV to keep it working.

Answer 1

Fascinating just reading about your setup. I have a WRT350N and have noticed that it will drop its speed, sometimes down to 1Mbps. It seems to do so at about the same time every day, but usually comes back to speed in about 5 minutes. In my experience, the Apple TV will disconnect if the speed falls this low. Try monitoring the Linksys with Netstumbler, Vistumbler, or just in the Windows Network utility.
Check the "lease obtained" and "lease expired" times for your router to see if that is when the network fails. I've just finished reading an angry thread over at the Linksys forum about the WRT330N where someone mentioned that the router wasn't renewing its lease.
"I cannot set it run off automatic DHCP from the WRT330N, the router will not assign it an IP every time the lease expires, causing me to have to manually set an IP on the Print server. That's annoying. Having the router drop IP's to individual machines after 12-48 hours...very annoying."
http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Wireless_Routers&thread .id=67412
If that is the problem, then I would consider setting up a Static IP address for your Apple TV. You can do that through the user interface -> Settings -> Network -> Configure ... (Quite intuitive as you only have change IP address and the subsequent details remain the same.)
My router assigns IP Addresses in the ranges of 192.168.1.100 ->149. The idea here is to choose an address outside of that range but is not greater than 192.168.1.253 (and should not end in the number 1). You shouldn't have to change the linksys router as long as 50 clients are assigned in that range. You'll have to figure that out by accessing your router webpage at browser address 192.168.1.1 -> the default password is "admin" (without the quotes).
Good luck.