XAV101 not passing iTunes Sharing

Sharkus,

Quick update. I made another attempt at unplugging the adaptors and resetting but still no luck on getting the itune libraries to share. I also looked into the QoS and added the ports itunes uses to the highest priority with no luck as well.

I'm starting to think I may have gotten a lemon for an adaptor. With as prevalent itunes is, I would assume there would have been many others with similar issues. Since I'm getting very very replies to this thread, I assume not many others are having this issue.

Another update from me.
My XAV2501 adapters arrived yesterday and I installed all four of them and tested iTunes Home Sharing and I did not see any problems at all.

Hello

I thought I'd post because this forum appeared in my search results for a similar problem. Alas, I am not a Netgear customer in this case (I own Netgear stuff, but not the XAV101's being discussed here).

I've been struggling with getting the iTunes server working since buying an iPad last week. To quickly outline my setup, I have:

+ PC plugged into stereo in front room with iTunes 10.2.1.1 running on it
+ D-Link DNS-323 NAS with all my music on plugged into router
+ Powerline adaptors (not sure exact model/manufacturer) connecting the PC with the router, and thus the NAS

Quick summary - if I use my laptop to connect wireless to the network, iTunes Server running on the NAS is successfully detected in iTunes.

If I use the PC, or I plug the laptop into a powerline adaptor and disable wireless, iTunes does not detect the NAS as a shared iTunes Server device.

It seems this isn't a Netgear specific problem - rather, powerline adaptors are either blocking the iTunes Server data, or as Sharkus suggests, iTunes is discarding the info because it doesn't recognise it as LAN traffic.

Would love to hear from anyone who has solved this, but at the moment my solution seems to be to either buy a wifi adaptor for my PC (reluctant to do that as I game on it from time to time so want some reliability) or to buy a long ethernet cable and somehow feed it round doorways and under carpets directly into the router.

(apologies Netgear for hijacking your forum - this info seemed relevant though!)

Thanks Sharkus. It seems to be an intermittent issue. Some may be seeing problems, but I think the bulk of the individuals have not had any issues. If they did I would expect more people on this forum discussing the issue. I'm currently working with customer service on this issue. If they are able to figure out this issue, I will post. Thanks again.

I thought that I'd add to the discussion to say I've experienced exactly the same issue setting up 3 x XAV101 for my friend. He has one attached to his router, to which an Apple TV 2 is also connected via ethernet, another homeplug attached to his PC with iTunes library, and a 3rd attached to an Airport Express.

With the XAV101s it is not possible to stream music to the Airport express or Apple TV using AirPlay. Nor can the Apple TV access the iTunes shared library on the PC.

If all devices are directly attached to the router then the issues go away, I also lent my friend my 3 x XE104 homeplugs and these work completely perfectly with iTunes sharing and Airplay.

So the issue seems to be related specifically to the XAV101v2 product. I noticed Belkin have had this issue with their range of homeplugs as a fix has been released.

Raised a support case with Netgear, detailing all of the above, but so far the responses have been concerning the version of iTunes and whether it's 64 bit or not....

Is it possible these homeplugs are somehow blocking multicast? I understand this is necessary for Airplay, etc to work.

Thanks for your update James. You may be right that this is an issue with the XAV101. What did your friend end up doing? Buy a different model? I've been working with customer support and so far they have tried resetting, software update, and moving the adaptors to the same room but itunes continues to not share.

Despite sending Netgear a very detailed support case regarding all of the issues and steps taken to confirm the issue, the initial support representative just asked questions about the version of Windows and "iTUNE". Detailed responses were sent, and the support representative quickly realised this was too difficult, and has escalated it to another level. Nothing has been heard from Netgear support in around 2 days.

I saw a review of the XAV101v2 on the Amazon.co.uk website which can be found here. It references the devices don't work with iTunes sharing/Airplay and that apparently Netgear are lab testing the issue. The review is shown below. Click Here to see the review on Amazon's website.

I brought these last week as an upgrade from my older Netgear HDX101 Powerline adapters which i've had for 4 years. The XAV101v2 adapters arrived and were easy to set up; just plug them into the wall socket, plug in the RJ45 cable and you're away. I found a big increase on speed vs my older HDX's, which were averaging about 88Mbps, to about 125Mbps. The issue came when trying to connect my iPhone to my PC's iTunes library to control my music around the house. With the HDX's it worked no problem where i have the iPhone 'Remote' app connected to the wireless router which is in turn connected to the Powerline adapter that connects to my PC which hosts the iTunes library. Although you can add the device in iTunes the library does not pass through the XAV101 powerline adapter, due to i'm guessing, the added security features in the newer adapters. But when i switch back to my older HDX's everything works perfectly fine. There are threads on both Apple's and Netgear's support forums about the issue and I've logged the issue with Netgear support, which they say will be lab tested in the next week. In summary: Excellent product and what you'd expect from Netgear, but simple sharing issues need to be resolved or allow you to disable the security features. If they can fix the issue then i'd give them 5 out of 5.

I would've hoped Netgear would've linked the similar cases that are being raised here. I'd seen on Apple's forums that Belkin had similar problems, and it took them a while to fix. But no-one seems to know exactly what the cause of the problem is... Belkin certainly don't seem to be letting on what they did to fix their homeplugs. Click here for details on the Belkin homeplug issue on Apple's Discussion forum.

Anyway, my friend contacted the retailer where he brought the XAV101s and they immediatey offered a full refund.... so he's going to either get the older XE104 units, or try another manufacturer. D-Link don't seem to suffer from the issue.

I'd still like to understand exactly what the problem is here, it seems to be an issue which has arisen since the HomePlugAV standard and that HomePlug 1.0 is unaffected.

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Is anyone else working on a solution around this? Any progress?

I am trying to solve this as well, any progress so far?