On Jan. 13, Android Police announced several cases where a Google Home Max($408.99 at Dell Home) spokesman was knocking TP-Link Archer C7 routers offline.
Since then, other things have been altered by the bug, including other Google Home speakers and Chromecast dongles, as well as extra TP-Link router models and routers from Asus, Linksys, Netgear, and Synology. According to commentaries on Reddit, some Google Wifi $114.00 at Amazon users have also been changed.
TP-Link reveals that the issue is created by the Cast feature, which allows your receiver, Google Home speakers, and Chromecast devices to reach. This feature “sends an MDNS multicast discovery packets to find and keep alive joint with Google products such as Google Home,” says TP-Link. Normally, the packets are given out in 20-second intervals. Following a fresh firmware update, for some unexplained reason, when exiting a sleep state, the devices would seldom send an excessive number of packages (exceeding 100,000, in some cases) to the router, causing it to crash.
TP-Link says the longer the machine sleeps, the “larger this packet burst will be.”
So what can you do to manage your Google Home or Chromecast from crashing your wireless network?
A fix by Google has not yet been published, though the company told 9to5Google it’s “working immediately to share a solution.” CNET reached out for commentary but Google has not responded.
For TP-Link users, the company has released official patches for the bug to most of the device versions affected and beta firmware for the Archer C1200. Log in to the admin panel for your router and check for firmware updates. For the Archer C1200, you will first need to download the true beta firmware to your computer and follow these directions from TP-Link. Installing the incorrect firmware can corrupt your device and void the warranty, so make sure you download the exact version for your device.
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