HomePod Gen2 connecting through my Apple TV 4K Gen 3 to the router.

Question

HomePod Gen2 connecting through my Apple TV 4K Gen 3 to the router.

I don’t have a problem here, but this behavior didn’t show up in a search and the knowledge might be helpful. My two new HomePods Gen 2 connect directly to my new Apple TV 4K Gen 3. This impressed me. The way I know they are, is my Apple TV is hard wired to Ethernet. The Eero router shows the HomePods as hard wired as well instead of the expected WiFi. Since this location is between two different Eero routers, I was curious which one they connected to. To my surprise, it was neither, they both show hardwired to the main router. I now have three TVs at two locations that connect to HomePods. One of those Apple TVs has a pair of GEN one HomePods. The weird part is one shows hardwired and the other one shows Wi-Fi and they are a HomePod pair. I do believe you need a Wi-Fi network to do the initial set up for the HomePods, but I’m not even sure about that. Since the set up is completely

automatic, I don’t have a clue what’s happening. But two brand new HomePods sure do work great!

New OLED TV 83 inch, upgraded my Apple TV 4K to the latest generation and got rid of my old sound bar and replaced it with two brand new HomePods. Life is good.

HomePod, 18

Posted on Apr 17, 2025 7:41 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

markfromlandolakes Author

Level 1

147 points

Apr 18, 2025 10:39 PM in response to MrHoffman

In addition, this was posted on reddit.com 3 years ago:

Since tvOS 15, the HomePods will now connect directly to the AppleTV 4K, which exposes them to the network, so they are technically connected to your network via the same ethernet port. It improves the latency between the AppleTV and the HomePods.

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Answer 2

Apr 22, 2025 8:28 PM in response to MrHoffman

Since the 15.1 update, if you make them the default audio output of an Apple TV 4K hardwired to a router, the Homepods will use the Ethernet connection of the Apple TV for everything, and all the interactions, including Siri responsiveness and the streaming itself, will improve massively.

Apple seems to have tighten up the ad hoc network between the Apple TV and the Homepods, and now, if your Apple TV is hardwired, they use that connection instead of their own Wi-Fi (in fact they will disappear from the list of connected wifi devices of your router).

Clever way to improve performance!

To play lossless and Atmos content from Apple Music this way, make sure that "lossless audio" and "Atmos" is enabled on both the Home App settings and the Apple TV 4K Music app settings.

This quote was found here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/qhwp7h/how_to_improve_your_homepods_performance/

Again, this only happens with HomePods that are being used as TV Speakers with an Apple TV. How would Eero possibly know that. "traceroute" shows no intermediate, not does any device that connects though any of the Eero Wireless devices. Actually one of the wifi HomePods is connected though an Echo device, and traceroute doesn't show that device either...

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Answer 3

Apr 23, 2025 8:12 AM in response to tvertner

tvertner wrote:

...

4. The Apple TV maintains the IP addresses for the HomePods in case any AirPlay or other network devices need to talk to them, effectively acting as a Bluetooth gateway (not a WiFi router per se, similar in execution).

That would be known as a sleep proxy.

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Answer 4

Apr 18, 2025 10:35 PM in response to MrHoffman

They definitely are connecting through my Apple TV 4K 3rd Gen or they would show up as wifi connections not Wired. Note: Only those being used for my TV sound with my Apple TV 4K 3rd gen show as wired connections. 4 other HomePods in my house show connected through WiFi. Actually my previous sound system, "Bose", used a proprietary wireless connection to connect to the subwoofer to avoid latency issues. I always wondered how Apple got around this with their HomePods when connected to Apple TV's. So it is natural that they would connect directly, wirelessly, to avoid these problems. If they are not connected directly to the Apple TV why are the only two that show up this way happen to be the 2 out of the 6 that happen to be connected to the Apple TV?

Also, I am always on the latest version of Eero. It would be amazing if it knew to single out only the 2 HomePods that are being used as TV sound to call them wired connections...

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Answer 5

Apr 21, 2025 6:55 AM in response to markfromlandolakes

markfromlandolakes wrote:

🤷‍♂️… I would have expected each of the HomePods on my main TV to be connected to two different Eero devices.

Wireless networking is subtle and fickle, and this would not be the first Wi-Fi bug, or Wi-Fi product display bug.

Without someone with direct knowledge of how these HomePods connect, it will remain a mystery.

That would be eero support, since it is eero showing what is either some easily-misinterpreted data, or incorrect data.

Alternatively: use traceroute from a Mac or PC and view the IP network path to the HomePods; either routed directly as would be expected, or far more doubtfully routed via Apple TV 4K.

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Answer 6

Apr 18, 2025 7:51 AM in response to markfromlandolakes

Check for eero firmware updates, and apply the most recent.

Then for further assistance with how eero reports (or confuses?) network connectivity, best contact eero support, or an eero-related forum.

No HomePod I’m aware of has a wired connection, though Apple TV 4K has both wired and wireless networking. So things are already seemingly somewhat confusing.

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Answer 7

tvertner

Level 1

44 points

Apr 22, 2025 8:45 PM in response to markfromlandolakes

If I was a betting man, I’d expect that the architecture looks lime this:

HomePods connect to WiFi, get an IP address.
HomePods are linked to Apple TV via Bluetooth, converting them to dumb Bluetooth speakers/microphones.
All processing for HomePods now takes place on the much more powerful Apple TV processor.
The Apple TV maintains the IP addresses for the HomePods in case any AirPlay or other network devices need to talk to them, effectively acting as a Bluetooth gateway (not a WiFi router per se, similar in execution).

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Answer 8

Apr 22, 2025 9:32 PM in response to markfromlandolakes

I can say this about the "traceroute" (a unix command used through the terminal.app) results. The times are much quicker for the wired 1 Gbit network than wifi. Also, the HomePods connected though the Apple TV although not as fast as the Apple TV itself, they are still much more consistent and consistently faster than the HomePods that are not connected to an Apple TV. It's been ages since I have used this. Also, not IPv6. I wonder how to do any IPv6 "traceroute"... I'll have to work on that...

The command is traceroute6. I haven't gotten any response with that, I'm not good with IPv6 yet...

Actually I got IPv6 "traceroute6" command to work. Similar times as IPv4....

"fd98:a3a6:926b:1:ce5:d9a0:d2f9:4d8c" fun addresses.... 🤣

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Answer 9

Apr 19, 2025 9:59 AM in response to markfromlandolakes

markfromlandolakes wrote:

In addition, this was posted on reddit.com 3 years ago:

Since tvOS 15, the HomePods will now connect directly to the AppleTV 4K, which exposes them to the network, so they are technically connected to your

network via the same ethernet port. It improves the latency between the AppleTV and the HomePods.

That seems somewhat confused.

I wouldn’t expect an Apple TV to act as an IP network router.

I would expect an Apple TV could use Bluetooth to directly connect to HomePods.

But would not expect an Apple TV 4K to route Wi-Fi or Bluetooth network connections to HomePods. That would mean subnet routing or bridging or repeating too, which is a little much to expect of an Apple TV 4K. And given the HomePods are a capable Wi-Fi client, why bother?

I’ve checked a mesh network I have access to with a semi-similar mix of hardware — though not an eero network — the HomePods are all directly connected to the Wi-Fi mesh access points, and not routed via the Apple TV 4K.

As a test from a Mac (or from some other traceroute-capable app), use the traceroute command, and see which way the connections go. With a mesh network test, I’d expect a direct connection to the HomePods, and not traversing the Apple TV 4K IP address.

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Answer 10

Apr 20, 2025 8:08 PM in response to MrHoffman

🤷‍♂️… I would have expected each of the HomePods on my main TV to be connected to two different Eero devices. Without someone with direct knowledge of how these HomePods connect, it will remain a mystery.

I have two homes a condo and an RV lot with a Park Model RV. At the RV lot I also have an Apple TV 4K 3rd gen with 2nd gen home pods. The only difference in the whole set up is that it’s a Eero 6e instead of 6. Currently both of these show connected to a single wireless Eero device, the Apple TV 4K is connected via a wired connection (MoCa) via the gateway Eero. All I can think of is somehow it knows how to adjust for the latency. Regardless, all my HomePods work wonderfully and I am continuously impressed.

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Answer 11

Apr 22, 2025 8:32 PM in response to markfromlandolakes

If my HomePods are not connecting directly to the Apple TV, then how have they gotten around the latency problems other providers such as Bose have had? Bose used a proprietary wireless technology for that reason.

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Answer 12

Apr 22, 2025 8:05 PM in response to MrHoffman

I would doubt that Eero would know anything about HomePods...

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Answer 13

Apr 22, 2025 8:54 PM in response to tvertner

🤷‍♂️ Without direct information from Apple we won't know. This may be secret Apple Information. But, I can say, they work great!!!

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HomePod Gen2 connecting through my Apple TV 4K Gen 3 to the router.

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