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google home chromecast

Habitation smart speaker sales exploded over Christmas, reportedly because so many people gave them as gifts. Concerns over the ideals of giving someone a home spying device aside, it appears the hardware is causing real problems for Wi-Fi routers.

Originally, it was idea that the problem was bars to 1 Google device, the Google Home Max, and i company'southward routers (TP-Link). Additional analysis has shown this is not the example, on either end. The Google Home Mini, Google Abode, and Chromecast are all reportedly affected, as are routers from other companies. TP-Link has posted an update with their troubleshooting results. It reads, in part:

Following initial enquiry and investigation, our applied science team is confident that they've determined 1 of the primal origins of the effect. From what we have gathered so far, the event appears to be related to some of the recent versions of Android Bone and Google Apps.

This issue stems from these devices' "Cast" feature, which sends MDNS multicast discovery packets in order to notice and keep a alive connection with Google products such as Google Home. These packets normally sent in a 20-second interval. All the same, nosotros have discovered that the devices will sometimes circulate a large corporeality of these packets at a very high speed in a brusque amount of time. This occurs when the device is awakened from its "sleep" land, and could exceed more than than 100,000 packets. The longer your device is in "sleep", the larger this packet burst will be. This effect may eventually cause some of router'due south master features to close downward – including wireless connectivity.

Generally, you volition need to perform a reboot to release the retentiveness to solve this result. You may also try disabling the "Cast" characteristic on your Android device to help mitigate the effect until an update is released to permanently fix this issue on the device itself.

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TP-Link has created beta patches to try to resolve the issue on their ain hardware, simply notes that a true fix will depend on Google releasing i themselves. While it's clear this is an unintended bug, it does indirectly highlight a different issue: As the Internet of Things becomes more popular, it'south going to be more than and more critical for companies to bargain with issues similar this. Back when a quick router reset solved most problems, it was ane thing, but running around resetting more and more than wireless products to address these kinds of issues will exist a nonstarter once your average household has to reboot an actual handful of hardware to clear the problem.

Or, you know, requite somebody a book in lieu of a Google Home. If they need a hands-costless light solution, I'k pretty sure at that place's a clapping-based method in the "As Seen on TV" aisle at your local Walmart.

Now read: 20 Best Privacy Tips