Tag Archives: apple

Sophos UTM 9 blocking continuity between iPhone, iPad, Mac

I just recently migrated from Untangle 11.2 to Sophos UTM to give it a ride and noticed that a lot of things are blocked (which is a good thing if you know what you are doing and need to unblock it).  Just recently I noticed that I couldn’t make any more calls by using my iPad or Mac through my iPhone.  So, continuity was not working like it was before.

I went to the Apple site (see sources), but couldn’t figure out what port or services were the one that needed to be allowed by the firewall.  So, after analyzing dropped packages by the firewall, I noticed a pattern and created the following firewall rule.  Since the creation of this firewall rule, I haven’t had any more issues with continuity nor downloading content from games in Game Center.

Overall network mapping: Internal network -> Allow ports 6384:16472 -> Any

  1. Go to “Network Protection”
  2. “Firewall”
  3. Click “New rule…”
  4. Under “Sources:” add “Internal (Network)”
  5. Under “Services” (you probably haven’t created this, so we are going to do it the long way), click on the “+” to add a new service
  6. Give it a name.  Probably “Apple Continuity”
  7. On “Destination port:” allow ports from “16384:16472”
  8.  Under “Comment” add these ports are “Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP), Real-Time Control Protocol (RTCP)” for “iChat AV (Audio RTP, RTCP; Video RTP, RTCP), FaceTime, and Game Center”
  9. Click “Save”
  10. Under “Destinations:” add “Any”
  11. (Optional) Add comment
  12. Click “Save”

Now you should be able to use Apple continuity by handing over calls over your iPad and/or Mac from your phone under the same network.

Hopefully Sophos UTM could include this as default with their future releases.

Source: TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products – Apple Support

Streaming movies and music from iTunes to iPad to iPhone

Not until today that I found the right article to be able o stream from my iTunes to any of my apple devices.  Previously any time that I tried to make such a research, I found a bunch of apps that you would need to pay for and do some configuration on your PC or Mac.  Well, the article below will go over that you can do such a sharing for free by just using Apple “Home Sharing”.  … and let me tell you, it works slick!!! I was able even to stream my >15k songs to my devices :).

  1. First things first… enable iTunes Home Sharing on your PC so open iTunes
  2. Go to File “Home Sharing” -> “Turn On Home Sharing”
    Login with your Apple ID and password to identify your Home Shares
    With your Apple ID entered, click on “Create Home Share”
  3. Now let’s configure your devices….
  4. Go to “General” -> “Videos and scroll down and login with your Apple ID and password
  5. Open the Video app on the device.
  6. Then your shared library will show up 🙂
  7. Click on that library and you will be able to see all of your videos.
  8. Then click on the video that you would like to watch and enjoy

I’ve tested the steps form 5 through 9 using the Music app as well from my device.  The only difference is is that you would have to click on “More” to make the switch from sharing library to local library on the device.

I am Therefore iPad: Home Share iTunes Movies to iPad.