Google Chromecast causing problems with Wi-Fi networks

Some owners of Google Chromecast dongles are experiencing unexpected Wi-Fi dropouts. The issue appears to be related to Chromecast's Cast feature.

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Google Chromecast users facing Wi-Fi interruption issue.

Some owners of Google Chromecast dongles are experiencing unexpected Wi-Fi dropouts. The issue reportedly affects routers from Asus, Linksys, Netgear, TP-Link, and Synology and appears to be related to Chromecast’s Cast feature. Google is aware of the issue and has even confirmed to 9to5Google, saying that the company’s engineering team “is working quickly to share a solution”.

Even TP-Link acknowledge the issue, saying that some users of its Archer C1200 have been facing issues with network connectivity. In a post on its FAQ page, TP-Link explained that could be the root case of the problem:

“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.”

Last week, it was reported that there were some Google Home Max users claimed their smart home speakers were crashing certain Wi-Fi networks. Apparently, the problem appears to be the same that affected the Wi-Fi networks of the Google Nexus player last year.