Petitioning Apple
From Educause Higher Ed Wireless Networking Admin Group
761
Supporters
With development from Apple,enterprise wireless networks would not need exotic work-arounds and redesign to support devices like AppleTV.
Letter to
Apple
I just signed the following petition addressed to: Apple Inc..
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We the undersigned academic and research institutions request that Apple provide improved support for Airplay and Bonjour technologies in our academic environments.
Our institutions are seeing an Apple client device penetration of around 50% on our campuses. This amounts to thousands of Apple client devices whose owners desire to use their Apple TV and other Bonjour enabled devices in a variety of scenarios:
- Based on Apple's own advertising, our faculty, staff, and students are requesting that we provide Apple TVs in our conference rooms, laboratories, and auditoriums so that they may use Airplay technology for presentations and demonstrations.
- Our faculty, staff, and students are requesting the ability to utilize Airprint to print from their Apple devices on our enterprise networks.
- Our students want to operate Apple TVs in their dormitory rooms which often utilize our institutions' enterprise wireless and wired networks.
Unfortunately, the following limitations of Apple's Apple TV, Airplay, and Bonjour technologies make it very difficult to support these scenarios on our standards' based enterprise networks:
- Airplay does not work when Apple TV's and Apple client devices are on different IP subnets. It is common for the enterprise wireless and wired networks in our institutions to utilize different IP subnets.
- Bonjour technologies also do not work in a scalable, sustainable fashion between different IP subnets. Work arounds such as Wide-Area Bonjour (DNS-SD) and Dynamic DNS updates have major scalability and security issues in enterprise networks.
- For performance and security reasons, many of our institutions do not enable IP multicast on their enterprise wireless networks. This limits the usefulness of current Bonjour technologies.
- The majority of our institutions' enterprise wireless networks utilize WPA2-Enterprise authentication and encryption. Current Apple TV's cannot connect to these networks even though the majority of Apple's other devices can.
- The security method used to connect Apple devices to Apple TVs (a single password per Apple TV) opens the devices to "hijacking" by unauthorized users.
Specifically, we request the following:
- That Apple establish a way for Apple TV's be accessible from Apple's client devices across multiple IPv4 and IPv6 sub-nets.
- That Apple improve Bonjour technology so that it will work in scalable and supportable fashion in large enterprise wireless and wired networks.
- That the Apple TV support enterprise wireless encryption and authentication (WPA2-Enterprise).
- That authentication between Apple devices and the Apple TV be able to utilize enterprise Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) services.
Any enterprise Airplay/ Bonjour solution needs to meet the following criteria:
- It must scale to a range of hundreds to thousands of Airplay and Bonjour enabled devices in a given environment.
- It must work with wired and wireless networks from different vendors.
- It must not significantly negatively impact network traffic (wired and wireless).
- It must be easily manageable at an enterprise scale.
- If it requires a separate hardware solution, that the solution must be enterprise grade (rack mountable, dual power supplies, etc.)
- It must be provided at a reasonable cost.
Providing support for Bonjour and Airplay Technologies on enterprise networks would benefit both our institutions and Apple by allowing Apple device owners the ability to use their devices as teaching and research aids, increasing the utility of and desirability of those devices.
We would be happy to collaborate with Apple in improving the support for these devices in our environments.
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Sincerely,
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We the undersigned academic and research institutions request that Apple provide improved support for Airplay and Bonjour technologies in our academic environments.
Our institutions are seeing an Apple client device penetration of around 50% on our campuses. This amounts to thousands of Apple client devices whose owners desire to use their Apple TV and other Bonjour enabled devices in a variety of scenarios:
- Based on Apple's own advertising, our faculty, staff, and students are requesting that we provide Apple TVs in our conference rooms, laboratories, and auditoriums so that they may use Airplay technology for presentations and demonstrations.
- Our faculty, staff, and students are requesting the ability to utilize Airprint to print from their Apple devices on our enterprise networks.
- Our students want to operate Apple TVs in their dormitory rooms which often utilize our institutions' enterprise wireless and wired networks.
Unfortunately, the following limitations of Apple's Apple TV, Airplay, and Bonjour technologies make it very difficult to support these scenarios on our standards' based enterprise networks:
- Airplay does not work when Apple TV's and Apple client devices are on different IP subnets. It is common for the enterprise wireless and wired networks in our institutions to utilize different IP subnets.
- Bonjour technologies also do not work in a scalable, sustainable fashion between different IP subnets. Work arounds such as Wide-Area Bonjour (DNS-SD) and Dynamic DNS updates have major scalability and security issues in enterprise networks.
- For performance and security reasons, many of our institutions do not enable IP multicast on their enterprise wireless networks. This limits the usefulness of current Bonjour technologies.
- The majority of our institutions' enterprise wireless networks utilize WPA2-Enterprise authentication and encryption. Current Apple TV's cannot connect to these networks even though the majority of Apple's other devices can.
- The security method used to connect Apple devices to Apple TVs (a single password per Apple TV) opens the devices to "hijacking" by unauthorized users.
Specifically, we request the following:
- That Apple establish a way for Apple TV's be accessible from Apple's client devices across multiple IPv4 and IPv6 sub-nets.
- That Apple improve Bonjour technology so that it will work in scalable and supportable fashion in large enterprise wireless and wired networks.
- That the Apple TV support enterprise wireless encryption and authentication (WPA2-Enterprise).
- That authentication between Apple devices and the Apple TV be able to utilize enterprise Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) services.
Any enterprise Airplay/ Bonjour solution needs to meet the following criteria:
- It must scale to a range of hundreds to thousands of Airplay and Bonjour enabled devices in a given environment.
- It must work with wired and wireless networks from different vendors.
- It must not significantly negatively impact network traffic (wired and wireless).
- It must be easily manageable at an enterprise scale.
- If it requires a separate hardware solution, that the solution must be enterprise grade (rack mountable, dual power supplies, etc.)
- It must be provided at a reasonable cost.
Providing support for Bonjour and Airplay Technologies on enterprise networks would benefit both our institutions and Apple by allowing Apple device owners the ability to use their devices as teaching and research aids, increasing the utility of and desirability of those devices.
We would be happy to collaborate with Apple in improving the support for these devices in our environments.
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Sincerely,
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