Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 1:16 Post subject: Bonjour / Zeroconf Issues (WRT3200acm)
Hi all,
I've brought this issue up a number of times in different areas of this forum including the Marvell open source driver project on GitHub without any real progress. Others have confirmed that they're experiencing this very same issue with DD-WRT on their WRT3200acm and we're still suffering.
To kick start the discussion, since the first release of DD-WRT for the 3200acm, Bounjour, zeroconf and mdnsresponder services appear flakey and broken.
When you first boot the router, devices relying on these services successfully appear on the network (Apple TV, Chromecast, Wireless printers, etc..) however after a short period of time (approx 60 mins) they stop presenting themselves and the only way to bring them back is by rebooting the router.
I ran some tests and can also confirm that the stock Linksys firmware has the same issue however it occurs after about 24 hours of uptime, which leads me to believe that it's a Marvell driver related issue.
I'm currently running DD-WRT build 33215 with both 2.4 and 5Ghz radios enabled, bridged and using independent SSIDs.
This is a major inconvenience as you could imagine and we really need this resolved. Any insights from BS or others to help work toward a resolution would be brilliant.
Ongoing issue guys, there was a glimmer of hope with FW 33257 where casting YouTube from mobile to SmartTV was fine and it would display cast the icon via the mobile YouTube app continuously during the day however since moving on to 33342 and now 33345 it's all gone to sh!t again.
Zerconf/Bonjour/mdns responder dependant services cannot be used without constant router reboots. I'm happy to provide logs if necessary to help the dev(s) debug and produce a sustainable fix.
Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 12:29 Post subject: Any Progress?
Has anyone ever found a solution to this problem? I'm running DD-WRT v3.0-r36698 std (08/22/18) on a Linksys WRT3200AMC and I'm experiencing the exact same problem.
mdns (used mainly for homebridge) works sometimes after a router reboot. But only for some minutes then it stops broadcasting on the WLAN. Sometimes it does not work at all and I have to restart several times. On the LAN connection, everything seems to be working fine, and I can see the mdns services.
But since I want to use apple home which is running on my mobile, this is no good at all. Any help would be much appreciated.
FYI: I also posted the exact same question on the above mentioned svn.dd-wrt ticket
It’s all related to issue #6319 mentioned multiple times on this area and others.
The whole world is waiting for brainslayer to fix this. Kong has already fixed it, but he only has a handful of routers he builds for.
If u want it to be working find the build from 5/7/2018. Any build after that date has this issue. _________________ WRT3200ACM V1 r39267 std (03/22/19) OpenVPN client
Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2018 23:18 Post subject: Found salvation for bonjour and googlecast in Merlin
I struggled with getting mDNS / zeroconf / bonjour working on my Asus RT-AC66U running DD-WRT 35xxx builds. I read tons of forums posts here and elsewhere and tried builds up through 37xxx from October 2018 that others reported stable. The key symptom of my problem was that Google Home, Google Home Mini, a Vizio "SmartCast" soundbar, a couple Insignia Google Assistant clocks and two Chromecast TV devices would never show up in Cast-compatible apps (e.g. the Chrome browser's "Cast" feature on desktops, the Google Home app, Pandora, Play Music, etc.). In researching, I tried the symptom down to the behavior of the multicast protocol that Google leveraged, called Bonjour when Apple first wrote it but later dubbed zeroconf and mDNS. (Lots of stuff on Google's site and other forums describing that protocol.)
To troubleshoot, I put the opensource implementation, avahi, on a physical box and a free Android app built atop open source mDNSResponder, called Service Browser, on my mobile device then checked for multicast packets from different points on the network. (I could have used tcpdump/wiresharp but I'm lazy.) The finding was that the mobile device on the same wireless 2.4GHz network as the GoogleCast devices could not see the mDNS multicast messages sent under the _googlecast._tcp local domain, but it could see mDNS messages from a Brother printer physically wired to a switch two hops away. Conversely, the physical box wired to the same switch as the printer running avahi-browse could see the both the printer's messages and the GoogleCast messages. Note that all of the GoogleCast publishers are wireless, and I moved them all to a single 2GHz network to simplify testing. I concluded from this that something within DD-WRT was interfering with those mDNS message.
I found many posts about IGMP proxies and toggling on IGMP snooping (in Setup->Networking tab), disabling multicast filtering (in Security->Firewall tab), disabling bridging and setting up the wireless network as its own segment, and even trivial stuff like ensuring AP isolation is disabled. I wrote down and tested 11 different configurations, none of which worked.
A few folks suggested there was a known bug on the DD-WRT backlog that just hasn't been fixed, but I couldn't find the technical detail of it so figured I'd try an alternate firmware. Merlin is praised in the Asus community so I grabbed build 380.70 and, after some fumbling to learn the wizard and GUI I'd never seen after 8+ years using DD-WRT, the basic config just worked. It even works when naming the 2GHz and 5GHz SSIDs identically, where the mDNS packets are visible on the mobile device even when it is connected to a different SSID than a given GoogleCast device.
Haven't looked at the code, but there is some difference obviously. With Merlin, I did not enable IGMP snooping, AP isolation is not enabled, and the wireless networks are bridged. These were default settings.
I tried and tried with DD-WRT, but either I couldn't get it, or there is some fundamental impediment. I recognize this is only helpful for folks with Asus hardware, but I hope it helps someone.
Since this topic is the top result on google for bonjour problems with dd-wrt, I wanted to drop a note for anyone else arriving here similar to me.
The link by cdthompso1 https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1111897 regarding AP isolation problems helped me solve this for my Asus N66U router. I had to drop back to firmware 33006 to get bonjour working again.
