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Google Home and Chromecast Could Be Overloading Your Home Wi-Fi (theverge.com)
Google Cast products could be to blame for your wonky internet connection. According to TP-Link, "The Cast feature normally sends packets of information at regular intervals to keep a live connection with products like Google Home," reports The Verge. "However, if the device is awakened from a 'sleep' mode, it will sometimes send a burst of information at once, which can overwhelm a router. The longer a Cast device has been in 'sleep' mode, the more information it might send at once." The engineer says that could exceed over 100,000 packets, an amount that "may eventually cause some of [the] router's primary features to shut down -- including wireless connectivity."
TP-Link has reportedly fixed the issue in its C1200 router, but a broader fix from Google's end has not been found.
TP-Link has reportedly fixed the issue in its C1200 router, but a broader fix from Google's end has not been found.
From TP-Link's statement on the C1200 update, it looks like it's MDNS multicast discovery packets.
Als impacts routers from Asus, Linksys, Netgear and Synology. Possibly more.
TP-Link are the ones who figured out what the cause was.
There's more to throughput than simply bandwidth.
For instance, most enterprise grade routers are rated for packets per second (PPS).
A cheap enterprise-grade 4-5 port router with a 2-core 500Mhz processor will most likely be rated around 1 million PPS while a 4-core at 1Ghz will be able to handle over 3 million PPS.
For comparison, the latest version of the of the TP-Link Archer C1200 mentioned in the article has only a 1-core processor running at 900Ghz processor which I assume would be rated around 800,000 PPS.
So, if one model of home device alone puts out 100,000 packets suddenly and there are more than one of the device in the house (Google Home in 2-3 rooms, Chrome Cast on 2-3 TVs), it all adds up pretty quickly on top of normal use in the background.
TCP has feedback. The servers don't push more than a window of data before waiting for the feedback from the client. So throttling downloads works quite well in practice.
Get a Gargoyle router. No need for that ngix proxy.
So, TP-Link "routers" can crap out when you send 200 MB through them?
No. TP-Link routers can crap out when you send 200MB multicasting at a very short interval, something that no client is expected to do.
Time to buy a competitor's product.
Whose? D-Link, and ASUS both have come out and said they are affected. This problem is affecting my father's top of the line D-Link modem/router too. It also apparently affects Google's WiFi as well as Apple's Airport.
There's more to data than just how much is going through.