Bonjour and Bluetooth Devices

Plug-n-play devices, in conjunction with Wi-Fi users' discovering services, can be very chatty and degrade the performance of your wireless network, especially as it grows in scale and spans gateways. To address this issue, you need to first avoid generating multicast Domain Name System (mDNS) frames. You can do that by using Bluetooth® Low Energy (BTLE) rather than Bonjour services to advertise Bonjour devices on a different WLAN or even on a different VLAN (depending on the proximity of those devices).

Using Bluetooth rather than Bonjour works because many Apple TV models and similar device include the IP address of the Apple TV in their Bluetooth advertisements. Thus supported Apple devices within Bluetooth range of the device (usually about a few thousand square feet) can hear those advertisements and establish an AirPlay session over the Wi-Fi network. The only restriction is that the devices are within Bluetooth range of each other so they can hear the advertisement beacons, and that the beacons are not blocked by a firewall.

In addition to using Bluetooth where possible to avoid creating mDNS traffic, the following best practices can also can help limit the amount of packets generated on the Wi-Fi network:

• Pool Bonjour devices into dedicated discovery VLANs.
• Use proximity and role-based discovery policies to limit Bonjour discovery.
• For custom Bonjour applications, test and monitor the service before moving to production.
• Add a Bonjour Gateway to a WLAN.