Update: According to Google, the bug has been identified and a fix will be rolling out to Android phones via a Play Store update. The bug in question lies within the Cast software on Android phones, which have been reported to send large packets of data that can lead to a slow-down in Wi-Fi performance.
Until the update lands, Google suggests rebooting your phone and ensuring that your router's firmware is current.
If you've been experiencing Wi-Fi dropouts and slow speeds on your home network recently, certain Google devices might be to blame according to several users in the Google Home Help Forum, as reported by Android Police.
"From what we have gathered so far, the issue appears to be related to some recent releases of Android OS and Google Apps," said the representative, further explaining that the "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."
Normally, this would occur at 20-second intervals, however, TP-Link's engineers discovered that "the devices will sometimes broadcast a large amount of these packets at a very high speed in a short amount of time," sometimes exceeding "more than 100,000 packets". In other words, devices like Chromecast and Google Home are basically DDoSing your router with more requests than it can handle.
Thankfully, the issue is now a known one, with some router manufacturers already offering instructions on how to roll back to earlier versions of their firmware that protect against the problem. Linksys, on the other hand, has already incorporated "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."
If you're still having issues, we suggest disconnecting your Google devices from your Wi-Fi network to see if that fixes the problem. If not, the issue may lie elsewhere.
