Re: Apple TV

[Julian Y Koh <kohster () NORTHWESTERN EDU>]

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On Fri Jan 20 2012 11:17:06 Central Time, Allen Wood wrote:
> Have any of you implemented Apple TVs into your environment?  Are there any risks/flaws/features that we should worry 
> about or prepare ourselves for?

I don't know about major security holes, but from a network operations point of view, there are some interesting 
wrinkles, since most of the time people want to put in these Apple TV units for the purposes of using Airplay to stream 
audio/video from an iOS device for output to a large display.  This can be fun because the Apple TV advertises itself 
using ZeroConf/Bonjour/Rendezvous, which as people may know can be lots of fun to deal with especially when you're 
dealing with having the traffic cross subnets.  Your iOS devices are going to be wireless.  The AppleTV could be wired 
or wireless, but depending on your local setup, you might not be able to guarantee that the AppleTV is on the same 
wireless subnet as your iOS device even if they're connected to the same AP.  If you set up local wireless networks, 
how do things scale for you as more and more people want to do this in terms of allocating IP addresses to areas that 
have a high likelihood of not getting used?  

Random other thoughts which are probably more security-related: how do you manage what AppleID is used to purchase/rent 
content via the AppleTV?  I haven't used one of these units myself, but is an AppleID required to even stream content 
from an iOS device to an AppleTV?

- -- 
Julian Y. Koh                         <mailto:kohster () northwestern edu>
Manager, Network Transport                         <phone:847-467-5780>
Telecommunications and Network Services         Northwestern University
PGP Public Key:<http://bt.ittns.northwestern.edu/julian/pgppubkey.html>

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