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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

#41

Post by stefco_ »

nmstoker wrote: post #31
londons_explore wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I was in Costa Rica last week with a slow wifi connection and had a similar experience with a 5MB offline PDF file in Google Drive. For some reason, drive decided to redownload it, but after only a minute it timed out and gave up. I just ended up going for two more days without the file, but I found it pretty ridiculous that Drive failed so miserably on such a simple use case.

I had a nearly seamless (albeit slightly slower) experience browsing Instagram on that slow connection despite the fact that all of the content was photo/video media, so I know the connection was not completely useless. It seems that Google engineers can't even fathom the possibility that someone would have a slow enough connection that a 5MB file might need more than a minute to download. This is frustrating.

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

#42

Post by wvenable »

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…

Agreed. I downsized my entire media center to just the Chromecast and it was getting quite frustrating. I disabled ipv6 on my LAN a few months ago and it drastically improved the situation. Still it works better on my Android devices and PC's than iOS devices.

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

#43

Post by dsnuh »

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…

I got a Pixel 2 also. So far wifi has been behaving, but Bluetooth has been a pain in the ass.

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

#44

Post by aeturnum »

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 quit using chromecast and a wireless HDMI solution. Does exactly what I want most of the time.

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

#45

Post by Pxtl »

habosa wrote: post #39

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.

I have the same router I bet (Archer c7) and I'm convinced it just hates Android devices in general.

Every time my phone has a connection hiccup it takes several minutes to renegotiate DHCP... But if I turn off WiFi and count to 15 and turn it on, it reconnects in 3 seconds flat.

I'm tempted to throw out my wifi gear but I'm having trouble who in the industry isn't total garbage, because I have an Asus AP that sure isn't helping.

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

#46

Post by chubot »

aeturnum wrote: post #44
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 quit using chromecast and a wireless HDMI solution. Does exactly what I want most of the time.

Do you have details on that solution? Is it a small PC?

One problem is that a lot of the things I cast use Android apps. Although I should check if they have web options. But a web browser is also a big dependency.

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

#47

Post by X-Istence »

drdaeman wrote: post #17
pvtmert wrote: post #10

imho, routers either handle this somehow or drop packeta. because mdns is higher level protocol than wifi and mac, router should not deal with those. also, with same hardware what happens there is whatsapp/hangouts video call? its about firmware

Routers deal with IP traffic (and even have to mess with TCP, e.g. clamp MSS), not just the 802.1 and 802.11. For SOHO routers, high PPS multicast UDP may be something hardware-accelerated routing doesn't particularly account for. And if software routing kicks in, high packet rate can very easily overload poor device's CPU.

It's due to the way multicast packets are transmitted on Wifi...

https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-mcbride-mboned-wifi-mcast-pr...

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

#48

Post by cptskippy »

I use to have my Chromecast plugged into my TV so people could stream videos and photos easily to share with people during gatherings. We use Roku for streaming. Then we took it on vacation and forgot to plug it back in. I realized the reason our WiFi was so awful in that room when I eventually plugged it back in and everyone started complaining.

Now it is only ever used for vacation.

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

#49

Post by neeleshs »

jordanthoms wrote: post #40
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.

Yes, Netflix is pretty bad when it comes to connecting to Chromecast

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

#50

Post by ggm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #29
ggm wrote: post #25

Google employ a small number of people to write TCP/IP core stack functionality. This is not a 'twenty hundred fiddy' people problem, its a six rising ten people problem. The core issue is: how do we get the team in question to acknowledge and respond, with a timely code change?

It doesn't sound like it's a core TCP/IP stack problem, it sounds like it's a Google Cast support in Play Services problem.

The packet explosion in multicast had me thinking some upper layer call is being made, which the stack interprets to mean "keep going" in ways which then bomb the link layer out of existence. Its not TCP/IP I agree. I mis-characterized that. But I think the essential quality is the same: this heads to a single, or small number of people. Google chooses modes of operation which isolates those people from the feedback channels. I have had experience of this: go into a room, present on observed behaviour of a google service, zero outcome. Go into another room, repeat, the guy who can fix it walks to the microphone and says "thanks, I fixed that"

There is no strong git, or feedback-driven path which determines success or failure notifying google about code problems. Some work, some which used to work don't work now, some which didn't work then work now. Its unstable. Its unpredictable.

(for example, feedback inside bug reporting channels for Android, where the most common response from google staff is "this is the wrong channel to provide that feedback" including things which are bugs)

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