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Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

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Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#31

Post by nmstoker »

londons_explore wrote: post #22
77ko wrote: post #9

Got a pixel 2, Chromecast and a Google home and now have lots of wifi woes. The timing being exactly after the pixel 2 (turned in cast and home before, didn't have problems). Edit: turning of guest mode on all cast devices makes things better (less wifi dropouts) but still bad. Turning of wifi on both the android phones in my house has cleared up the wifi problem (which was really annoying as even spotify kept failin…

In the Googleplex they have networks designed to be slow and crappy to test exactly this. All people working on consumer facing apps and sites are encouraged to use these crappy networks on a day to day basis.

I wish there was more evidence that they used them. Far too often their software seems to assume a superb connection.

Personal "favourite" is their Newsstand - it will ditch cached stories whilst out and about because it briefly got a connection on the Underground, only for the content to not download (precisely because you're on flakey Tube WiFi) and boom the best use case for that software is ruined!

Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#32

Post by mgalgs »

I have 7 Google home minis, 2 Chromecast Audios, 3 Chromecasts. Everything has worked fine up until a month or so ago. I've been using Chromecast since its initial launch and have never had these issues until now.

Google severely broke something recently, that's for sure. We had a Christmas party and I gave up playing music because it kept dropping off every few minutes. It seems like it has improved the past few weeks, but still pretty shoddy.

Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#33

Post by gd2 »

StudentStuff wrote: post #15
kpil wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have three Chromecasts and occasionally 7-8 mobile devices that are connected to them in multi-AP network. I have mostly Sony devices and I think they have a rather aggressive powersave profile. The last 3-6 month or so, the mobile devices have been losing connections to Chromecast while playing, and the network have become markedly more flaky also for other devices. I actually got a Chromecast Ultra with an e…

The unnecessary flood of multicast packets these Google devices send is causing your AP to drop to its lowest speed and broadcast those packets. Its the equivalent of having an 802.11B client that only syncs at 1Mbps and is constantly downloading. There is no airtime left for anyone else! Things you can try: Block 802.11G and lower clients (increases your minimum WiFi transmission speed), convert multicast packets to…

The scary part is that it takes highly involved HackerNews readers to possibly understand what's happening. Most regular folk are going to just think, Wi-Fi got flaky again.

Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#34

Post by kuschku »

londons_explore wrote: post #22
77ko wrote: post #9

Got a pixel 2, Chromecast and a Google home and now have lots of wifi woes. The timing being exactly after the pixel 2 (turned in cast and home before, didn't have problems). Edit: turning of guest mode on all cast devices makes things better (less wifi dropouts) but still bad. Turning of wifi on both the android phones in my house has cleared up the wifi problem (which was really annoying as even spotify kept failin…

In the Googleplex they have networks designed to be slow and crappy to test exactly this. All people working on consumer facing apps and sites are encouraged to use these crappy networks on a day to day basis.

It's pretty obvious they're not properly testing with that, though. I'm testing as a developer myself on a 2013 phone on throttled 4G (so I get between 64kbps and 1Mbps, depending on situation), on public transit – so connection drops all the time.

The result is that while some of my apps work fine, and a handful of apps work great, I’ve not yet found a single Google app that actually is usable in that situation.

Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#35

Post by senectus1 »

bshep wrote: post #12
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #2

It's blamed on MDNS packets being spaffed out at high speed. I've got 3 Chromecasts of various flavours in the house and have never seen this behaviour. Has anybody else had the problem?

I have been having wifi issues for the last 3 months and I have 2 Chromecast's Ive had them for much longer but after reading this I'm going to segregate them to a different wifi network and see if the wifi gets better but my understanding of the issue makes me think it won't get better without a Chromecast update

same here.

This article was a dawn of light for me.. time to start logging the wifi behavior

Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#36

Post by kuschku »

voltagex_ wrote: post #20
StudentStuff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unnecessary flood of multicast packets these Google devices send is causing your AP to drop to its lowest speed and broadcast those packets. Its the equivalent of having an 802.11B client that only syncs at 1Mbps and is constantly downloading. There is no airtime left for anyone else! Things you can try: Block 802.11G and lower clients (increases your minimum WiFi transmission speed), convert multicast packets to…

Hang on, if you're converting multicast packets does that mean only one device is receiving them?

The WiFi AP handles unicast packets differently than multicast packets.

So on a network with N devices, you just convert one mulicast packet into N unicast pakcets.

Because multicast packets are sent with the slowest possible rate, this actually speeds up performance as long as N < 20.

Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#37

Post by gkfasdfasdf »

I haven't noticed this problem. I've got a Chromecast v1, Chromecast Ultra, Home Mini, Pixel phone, and Google onhub + WiFi mesh, plus a bunch of other non-google devices. Perhaps the Google routers are able to handle the burst? I do wish that Chromecast was in general a little faster at connecting / playing etc.

Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#39

Post by habosa »

I've got a pretty good ($100) TPLink router and a 100Mbps Comcast connection in my 1BR apartment. I can almost never find the 5Ghz channel and get constant drops on my laptop, particularly the Linux one.

I've got a 1st Gen Chromecast, a Google Home Mini, and a Pixel XL.

Sounds like this is my culprit. Finally.

Re: Google Chromecast and Google Home Causes Wi-Fi Drops

#40

Post by jordanthoms »

chubot wrote: post #28

ChromeCast is such a frustrating product. It does exactly what I want in theory. In practice I have to wait 10 to 60 seconds to get it to connect, or reboot my phone. I've started giving up and just using the computer attached to my TV. I don't think I've been having the particular Wi-Fi issue described in the article, but ChromeCast has been just slow and flaky in my experience. I've had both v1 and v2. It seems to…

I have a similar experience, though I think a lot of the issues are actually with the apps - e.g. Netflix and Spotify will consistently not show my cast devices unless I quit the app and relaunch it, while other apps work ok.

Google needs to get far more vigilant about ensuring the third parties are implementing it properly though - even if the bug is actually with a third party, it reflects badly on their product.

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