TP-Link repeaters wastes 715 MB/month on NTP

[Nemni]

If you’ve got a recent model TP-Link repeater (not routers!) on your network, you may want to look more closely into its NTP related traffic. Especially if you’re paying by the megabyte or are on a tight monthly data cap!

I found that the firmware on TP-Link repeaters sends and receives 715 MB per month on NTP and related DNS traffic. A normal always-on Windows client uses 1,6 KB per month on the same task for comparison. This behavior is intentional from TP-Link as they’re misusing NTP as a internet connectivity checking tool. There is no off-switch for this feature.

Set your firewalls to block all outgoing traffic from your TP-Link repeater to mitigate the problem. —oh, and be sure to complain to TP-Link support. They should fix this or at least be made very aware of it.

 

[RMerlin]

This behavior is intentional from TP-Link as they’re misusing NTP as a internet connectivity checking tool. There is no off-switch for this feature.

I hope they're using their own NTP server for this and not abusing someone else's server like D-Link did a few years ago. Those D-Link router went belly up the day that NTP server decided to go down...

 

[Nemni]

I hope they're using their own NTP server for this and not abusing someone else's server like D-Link did a few years ago. Those D-Link router went belly up the day that NTP server decided to go down...

Of course, they’re not. They’re spreading the load across various universities, NIST, and the volunteer-run NTP Pool Project. See the article for details.

 

[RMerlin]

Of course, they’re not. They’re spreading the load across various universities, NIST, and the volunteer-run NTP Pool Project. See the article for details.

So they're abusing other people's resources. That's pretty bad...