Lately it seems there's a been bevy of issues with some our favorite devices and hardware, you have Apple suddenly having security issues with their Macbooks and iOS, then there's the whole Specter and Meltdown exploit that's plaguing Intel processors, sending shock waves within the tech community . Then we have Google, yes even Google is now having impacting issues. There are reports that some owners of Google Chromecast dongles and Home smart speakers are suddenly experiencing unexpected Wi-Fi dropouts and random router reboots. This issue seems to be affecting several different routers and the main culprit is how Google's devices are casting content.
If you head right over to Reddit you'll see a mass number of complaints of suffering users who are having problematic issues with Chromecast and Google Home devices that is Wi-Fi connected to ASUS, Linksys, Netgear, TP-Link and Synology routers. At least TP-Link is acknowledging the issues, saying that many users of the Archer C1200 model have been experiencing issues with network connectivity, and are being transparent offering their take on whats technically going on
TP-Link had this to say....
"Following initial research and investigation, our Engineering Team is confident that they've determined one of the key origins of the issue. From what we have gathered so far, the issue appears to be related to some recent releases of Android OS and Google Apps. This issue stems from these devices' 'Cast' feature, which sends MDNS multicast discovery packets in order to keep a live connection with Google products such as Google Home. These packets normally sent in a 20-second interval. However, we have discovered that the devices will sometimes broadcast a large amount of these packets at a very high speed in a short amount of time. This occurs when the device is awakened from the "sleep mode", and could exceed more than 100,000 packets in a short amount of time. The longer your device is in 'sleep', the larger this packet burst will be. This issue may eventually cause some of router’s primary features to shut down—including wireless connectivity."
Along with their statement, TP-Link offered this solution to the problem, users would have to perform a reboot to release the memory. Or users can simply try disabling Cast feature on their Android devices, this should temporarily clear up this issue until there is a permanent fix. As of now, TP-Link is offering a beta firmware with three models of its Archer C1200 routers.
Linksys and Netgear have also issued a firmware updates to the following models: WRT3200ACM and WRT32X routers and Orbi mesh routers.
Linksys...
"This firmware incorporates a new WLAN driver that will help mitigate an issue that was discovered where Android devices coming in and out of sleep mode would crash the Wireless Network. Both of these firmwares will eventually make their way to our update servers for regular download, however [we] decided that a month of this issue is long enough for us to post this for all of you that have been following this in the community to download and use while we go through our final QA checks that are required before putting it on the update server,"
Whats rather troubling is there have been no word from Google, at least I myself haven't seen any statements posted online. Also we don't know if Google is even working on a fix, more than likely they are leaving it in the hands of the router manufacturers. I myself luckily have not experienced any issues with my router, if I do, I will most certainly give you an update via social media.