TS2972 why do I have to turn sharing off and back on each time i use my apple tv?

Question

Whenever I switch to apple tv and try to access my files, I get the instruction to turn sharing on. When I check, the sharing is already on. I have to turn it off and then turn it back on for the apple tv to detect it.

Answer 1

There is somewhere on here a thread where some folks have done some in depth technical digging into the problem.
It seems that in those cases there are multiple 100+ TCP ports being held open between itunes/mac and the atv. I see this x3 with all my atv's when they were connected via ethernet cable. Home sharing is running out of ports to use in simple terms.
What on earth port forwarding can do for the problem i do not know, you can only forward to 1 device, how would this fix the probelm for subsequent atv's on the network?? It would be madness to do this anyway why would you open a secure port to the internet just to get a media player working
There are so many reports of this problem manifesting itself in various ways it is hard to give a simple answer
Some of the solutions just do not make any sense, solutions that work for some are opposite for others wifi <-> ethernet <-> wifi
I am convinced this is an internal networking issue at a base level, nothing to do with IP6,DHCP/Static/PortForwarding etc. Sleeping atv's may exagerate the problem
It will end up being a . or a , in the complied code somewhere in the last update of either itunes or ios
Someone on that thread has written some slick code to check for this problem and restart itunes if it finds it which may be a solution if it cant be solved other ways
My problem went away when I moved my atvs to wifi connection only, but then I know my network is otherwise good