ATV not showing in the iTunes device list? Check your HTTP proxy config

Question

Seems like many people are having trouble getting their ATV to show up in the iTunes Devices list. Here's my situation, and the root cause:
1. I have a small network at home consisting of one LAN with a number of computers, and a gateway router that provides DHCP, DNS and HTTP (web) proxy services
2. I found that my ATV would display in the Devices list only when the ATV and at least one Mac were isolated from the rest of my network; when I connected them back to the rest of the LAN the ATV disappeared from the Devices list (in the simplest case this isolation was a crossover cable between the Mac and ATV)
3. when connected to the whole LAN, the ATV could successfully contact the iTunes Store (trailers, etc) but would not show up in the Devices list
4. I could ping the ATV from the Mac running iTunes every time (i.e. I did not have a basic connectivity problem; e.g. "ping appletv.local." always worked)
5. I started with my ATV on v1.1, when I upgraded to 2.0 and turned on the the iTunes' "Look for remote speakers connected with AirTunes" option ATV always appeared in the speaker list (i.e. even when it wasn't in the Devices list)
I had gone through the Apple troubleshooting guides, with no change.
After a lot of elimination I discovered that my problem was with my web proxy settings: my Macs were configured to use my gateway router for HTTP, and it seems that iTunes connects back to the Apple TV via HTTP - these requests were sent to the proxy and rejected (as they were for an address on the inside LAN; this is the way my proxy was configured).
I fixed the problem by using a PAC file specifying my LAN as "DIRECT" (e.g. below). An alternative would have been to configure my proxy to allow connections from the LAN back into the LAN (but be careful about allowing access from elsewhere, e.g. the Internet).
Here's my PAC file: my LAN is in the 10.0.0.0/8 address space, domain *.home.lan. (iTunes seems to contact the AppleTV via it's IP address, e.g. http://10.0.0.169:3689/ript/fp-setup?fairPlayID=4a5...):
function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
// simple hostname
if (dnsDomainLevels(host) == 0) {return "DIRECT";}
// match Host against local domains (w/ optional :port)
var dom = /(127\.\d.d+.d+|.local.?|10.d+.d+.d+|.home.lan.?)(:d)?/;
if(dom.test(host)) { return "DIRECT"; }
// All other requests go through port 8080 of proxy
// should that fail to respond, go directly to the WWW:
return "PROXY proxy.home.lan:8080; DIRECT";
The reason the ATV was successfully appearing in the Devices list when it and a Mac were isolated from the rest of the LAN was that the Mac was unable to reach the proxy, and falling back to the 'DIRECT' connection.
Note: if you don't have basic connectivity, e.g. if ping appletv.local. doesn't work, then the above is almost certainly not your problem.
Ben
Message was edited by: af3556

Answer 1

Hi There,
I have the exact same issue going on that this person described in this thread, but with the EXCEPTION in my case being that, after I have plugged my device into my laptop and uplugged it (about 10 consecutive times), my iTunes FINALLY recognizes my iPod Touch.
This is extremely frustrating to have to go through this scenerio each and every single time I want to synch and charge my Touch. Is there any way to correct it, so that the device would be recognized immediately when I first plug it in? It used to work this way (prior to the v.10 update, most likely).
Thanks!