[cthalupa]

I use a TP-Link travel router while on the road to get access for all of my devices in hotels that have device caps, and for my Android TV devices which don't gracefully handle hotel login prompts.

I have to say that the convenience, ease of use, and reliability of the product far outweighs any concerns I have over ~715MB over the course of a month. It boots quickly once plugged in, it reliably handles 4-5 devices utilizing it as a bridge for the hotel wifi, and I have never had it crash, give me any sort of wonky behavior, or anything of that nature.

[0x0]

Don't forget that those 715mb you take have to be delivered by someone running those servers at the other end, multiplied by the number of devices. Don't be a vandal on the internet. Don't be the reason for why we can't have nice things like community ntp pools.

[cthalupa]

If the NTP pool has an issue with what TP-Link is doing, they should talk to TP-Link. If TP-Link is unresponsive to their concerns, then they should be public about it. It is not the responsibility of random consumers to know about how two other parties interact with each other.

This appears to be entirely a supposition that the NTP pool cares that TP-Link is doing this, without any evidence from the actual people in charge of it are concerned. As best I can tell, this blog is not run by Ask Bjørn Hansen and neither he nor the ISC have voiced any concerns here.

[JdeBP]

Ask Bjørn Hansen encouraged TP-Link to comply with the vendors system and get its own hostname, back in January 2017.

* https://community.ntppool.org/t/software-and-devices-without...

[jlgaddis]

> Don't be the reason ...

He's not the reason.

As TFA points out, it's TP-Link repeaters and explicitly "not routers" that are affected.

[jsjohnst]

> I have to say that the convenience, ease of use, and reliability of the product far outweighs any concerns I have over ~715MB over the course of a month.

So your convenience trumps the impact you’re causing to global infrastructure? Yes, you’re just one among millions, but still a slippery slope.

[cthalupa]

>So your convenience trumps the impact you’re causing to global infrastructure

Honestly? Yes.

Should I want TP-Link to fix it? Maybe. Should pressure be put on TP-Link to fix it? Yes.

But not by consumers. It isn't the responsibility of a random consumer that has no idea what an NTP server even is to understand whether or not the TP-Link router is going the "right thing" for all sorts of use cases they've never even heard of it.

From a consumer perspective, does TP-Link build a good product? Yes. And that's all consumers care about.

The pragmatic reality of the situation is if this is an issue, the public service providers need to do something about it.

You cannot expect consumers to worry about or even know about this sort of thing. They don't care. They'll never care. This blog post won't make these random consumers that see it as a highly rated product on e-commerce websites care. TP-Link won't care when the niche population of people that care about this don't buy their product because we're not the market.

If the NTP pool cares about what TP-Link is doing, they should reach out to TP-Link about it, and if there's no co-operation, be public about it.

Pissing into the wind on a random 3rd party blog about how consumers should switch because of something 99.9% of consumers don't care about isn't going to accomplish anything, whether we a conscientious net citizens should care or not.

[Johnny555]

What's the point of the NTP pool providers making their concerns public when consumers like you, who apparently are aware of the issue and what it means, don't care because TP-Link makes a "good product"?

Your attitude kind of reminds of the people that toss their cigarettes out their car window. When confronted they'll say something like "But my car doesn't have an ashtray, this is easier" or "But I don't want used cigarette butts in my car" or "What am I hurting? It's only one cigarette, and there are volunteers that clean up my cigarette butts from the roadside" or "If it was really a problem, they'd enforce it better, I've never been given a ticket for it"

[cthalupa]

Because I'll be more concerned if the NTP pool providers say "This is detrimental to our services" than if a random 3rd party blog (that has apparently not even checked their math) says I should worry about it.

[dsharlet]

TP-link is clearly ignoring many of the instructions from NTP: http://www.pool.ntp.org/vendors.html

Notably, they are ignoring the ones that make it possible for NTP to be aware of the problem in the first place. Right now, TP-link's traffic probably just looks like millions of unrelated devices misconfigured. NTP wants vendors like this to make requests to a particular subdomain so they can identify problematic vendors in the first place.

[jlgaddis]

He's actually not causing any "impact" at all.

> The firmware of some TP-Link repeaters — but not routers — including all 2017 models ... --TFA

[jsjohnst]

I didn’t want to assume what he had or didn’t have in hardware, I was more concerned by the attitude displayed and then later repeated.

[jlgaddis]

I've got a couple of MR-3020 "travel routers" myself, though I run OpenWRT on 'em. They're pretty decent little boxes and well worth the $15 or so that I paid for 'em.

[cthalupa]

I've got the successor, the TL-WR902AC

Looks like LEDE might support them, though when I purchased it, it did not. I might check that out.