UPDATE 8/18/2026 2PM EST

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OK. Fingers crossed but I think everything resolved for the most part. Will need to monitor for the next few days but this nightmare looks like it's over.

HEAVY ASSUMPTIONS TO FOLLOW

1. During my initial setup for the very first Deco unit, during the setup I accidentally went too fast through the setup screens. There is one screen that asks you to choose the layout of your home, and I hit 'NEXT' on the screen while it was only showing a single level floor plan. You can hit the +/- buttons to add or remove floors. So instead of choosing a 3 story home, I chose a 1 story flat layout like an apartment.

2. I only applied the newest firmware to the Deco after I had already done up all 3 points.

Working on the theory that either a. selecting a 1 story level plan in the setup triggered a hidden selection inside the Deco to use a very tiny radio signal, which then crippled it's ability to stream anything to the nodes was my first assumption. I also theorized that the latest firmware, while showing as being applied, was not actually doing anything on the primary unit.

Taking one commenters advice that I might have 'a bad unit'.. I went through a very painful process (many failed attempts) to do the following:

1. unplug the internet, change the assignment of Primary Router from the 'bad' living room Deco to the basement Deco. First attempt failed, second attempt succeeded.

2. Unplugged all 3 units, took the now primary basement unit and moved it up into the living room. Powered it on, waited for a bit, it crashed my ISP modem on the first connect, but rebooting the ISP modem finally got internet showing up on the new primary Deco.

3. Removed the other 2 units from the app. Attempted to factory reset the 2 nodes with my handy sim tool, first Deco reset quickly. The 'bad' unit refused to reset on multiple attempts. Always showed a bright green light as if it were connected.

4. Set up the first reset unit easily (with the 3 floorplan config) and low and behold. As soon as it connected to the Primary.. everything looked perfect. And by that I mean, current upload download speeds was updating quickly. Connected devices stayed connected and mostly, solid green wifi icons across the board.

5. Replugged the 'bad' unit, and just sat and stared at it, swearing at it like a motherf*ck*r... solid green light wouldn't budge. Then out of the blue, turned flashing red,... followed by quick pulsing yellow... then bang... blinking blue. Started the setup on it, 3 level floor plan. Deco added.

I now appear to have 3 fully functional Deco units... No drop outs, cameras appear to be very stable, can click into them and view the video feed within 1-2 seconds. Looks like the Gremlins are gone (fingers crossed)

I still had a quick scare when my office computers couldn't remote into my servers in the basement (connected via ethernet) ... turns out it was a clusterf*ck mix of

a. computers thinking new network connections so it switched to 'public' instead of 'private'
b. subnet mask mismatch (i was using 255.255.255.0 when i should have been using the 255.255.252.0 being used in the Deco apps config.
c. Tailscale misconfig

But now I'm at the point I can remote into any LAN machine, cams are all operating without a hitch, no dropouts, smart home connectivity seems solid,

Still going to monitor for the next little while, but I think this is finally the ultimate fix. Indeed one 'BAD' unit brought this whole house of cards down.

REALLY REALLY WISH TPLINK would either make the home floorplan layout thing a config option inside Deco (because once you go through setup, you'll never see that option again).. and if it indeed controls Radio power.. this is a glaring f*ck*ng oversight in engineering terms.

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ORIGINAL POST

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TL;DR - New Deco system causes havoc when trying to use TPLINK effing devices on it's mesh. Not worth the plastic it's housed in.

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I tried.

I REALLY REALLY TRIED TO MAKE THIS WORK.

Deco XE75 AXE54000. 3 pack. Wanted to replace my existing Google Nest Wifi (GA00595-CA) network because it's 5ghz backhaul would constantly crap out to my office and my speeds would drop for file transfers from 30-40 mb/s down to between 1-5 mb/s.

6ghz dedicated backhaul should fix this right? Found a deal on the XE75. Plugged'm in and though this should be great. Office speeds on internet went from just over 200mbps up to 850mbps. WOW!

Then the fun began. My f*cking TPLink Kasa smart plugs and my TPLink Tapo camera's would start going offline,.... constantly. And my life has not recovered since.

3 f*cking apps. Deco, Kasa, Tapo. Kasa connected to Tapo. 3 interfaces, all showing me different things and different status.

• Deco client list shows all units are connected to Wifi.
• Deco smart devices shows only the Kasa plugs, some available, some offline.
• Kasa shows many plugs, but some are completely missing, removed them after giving me a message about 'local control', and some are offline, but not matching the Deco list
• Tapo shows all the devices, but again, many units offline, some of which show online in one of the other apps
• Unable to 'DISCONNECT' Kasa from Tapo to regain 'local' control of devices. Menu only tells me Kasa/Tapo link authorized.

And every time I try to interact with a plug or camera, my entire f*cking network goes haywire, with mass disconnects of devices accross my entire network, not limited to Kasa or Tapo. It affects everyone's phones, laptops and other smart devices.

I have tried to troubleshoot this son of a b*tch for almost 2 weeks now and I'm borderline insane now.

• Ensured my phone was set to use my Device MAC, not a random one.
• Created an IoT network on the Deco
• Reset EVERY smart device to clear previous WiFi saved settings for previous Google units.
• Updated the firmware on EVERY Kasa/Tapo device, latest firmware on Deco
• Set Primary Wifi SSID to 2.4/5ghz only, leaving 6ghz for wireless backhaul only, channel width at 80MHz (lowest limit i can select)
• Set IoT network to 2.4 ghz only. 5ghz disabled.
• Under ADVANCED > dropped fast roaming/beamforming/mumimo (and now my wife hates me because her work calls break when she moves around the house with her laptop), SIP ALG = Disabled
• Set EACH smartplug/camera/IoT device to 'Mesh Technology' = Disabled to prevent moving around
• Attempted to point them to try to connect to the primary point
• Force all Deco nodes to use the Primary Living room router point

NOTHING. Everytime I did one fix.. it stabilized for a short while, but then out of the blue something kills it. I go into the app and try to edit a setting.. boom all devices go offline/online, some don't come back online. I play whack-a-mole with the cameras. When they disconnect/reconnect, it's a coin toss if it's a green light or an orange light. Once it's orange, i have to physically unplug and re-plug the camera back in. And then even the act of physically rebooting one camera back to online state might knock another camera offline (orange light) without ever touching the app.

This is f*cking ludicrous.. considering this is all in the same god damned ecosystem of TPLINK, for such incompatibility to occur is beyond incompetence.

I've given it my all. CoPilot gave it it's best shot to help me, Gemini ultimately gave me this final summary.

>Root Cause 1: MLO / Smart Connect Multicast Loop

>Even though you isolated the IoT network, TP-Link’s internal bridge between the Main Network, IoT Network, and app ecosystem handles Local Area Network (LAN) discovery via mDNS (Multicast DNS) and UPnP. When a Kasa or Tapo device responds to a command, it broadcasts its status locally. On the X75, a known bug causes the Decos to re-broadcast these multicast frames in a continuous loop across mesh nodes, flooding the 2.4GHz band, causing latency, app desync, and eventually crashing the main router daemon (the "whole network lost connection" phase).

>Root Cause 2: Hardware NAT / Deco Router Mode Overhead

>When running in Router Mode, the Deco unit acts as the gateway, firewall, DHCP server, and cloud bridge simultaneously. Smart plugs and cameras constantly ping local and cloud endpoints. If the Deco's internal ARP/DHCP tables overload during a multicast burst, the main unit reboots its routing service (which causes the solid/flashing LED reset sequence).

>Should you return the Deco X75?

>YES, you should return it if:

>You switch to AP Mode and sending a plug/camera command still causes the entire Wi-Fi network to drop.

>do not have an upstream router and need the Decos to function as your primary router, but turning off UPnP/adjusting settings does not prevent the full-network crashes within 24–48 hours.

>The Deco X75 uses a Qualcomm chipset that theoretically handles heavy client loads, but TP-Link's software bridge between Kasa, Tapo, and Deco local discovery is notoriously buggy on certain firmware builds. If a mesh system requires hours of manual tuning just to keep first-party smart plugs online without crashing the network, it isn't fulfilling its primary purpose.

My return window on these (Thank you Amazon) is Sep 2 for Deco XE75 3pack and Sep 5 for Deco X10 2pack. I really don't think I'm going to wait that long. Going back to my Google mesh system while annoying, will not be as utterly soul sucking and life destroying as dealing with this nonsense. I have invested more hours than a normal human being should have on this.

If there is anyone from TPLINK reading this.. get your f*cking house in order and fix this broken ass firmware. One could be forgiven for incompatibility arising from 3rd party plugs and camera's.. BUT THIS IS YOUR OWN ECOSYSTEM!

I'm calling TPLINK support today and we'll see what they say, but if anyone wants to chime in here with a magic bullet myself, CoPilot or Gemini hasn't thought of... I'm all ears. But ultimately, I think these p.o.s. devices can all go back to the warehouse where they belong and I'll end up getting EERO or ASUS instead.

Stupid question. Is this app still a thing?

I wanted to get it on my Pixel 9, but the app says it isn't available since it was made for an earlier version of Android.

I rather like the interface and would like to manage my server from my phone instead of running to my computer desktop.

Will this ever come back to the latest Android?

Sorry for the back to back posts, but wanted to add another while fresh in my mind.

When I launch Plex client on my phone, select my media, then click on the cast icon > select my bedroom TV chromecast > start casting.

If any of the following occurs:

1. I put my phone off to the side for any length of time
2. My phone screen goes black
3. I switch to another app in the phone during playback

The moment I go back into the Plex app.. i see the cast icon is in connected state, i see the episode it's playing at the bottom of the interface which i can expand up into the full pane.

However, any manipulation or modification of the current stream (pressing pause/scrubbing the timeline/30seconds forward or backward button) do absolutely nothing.

Using the 30 second buttons as an example. I can press it, i can see like it looks like it's doing it on the phone, but nothing happens on the tv, and that\s it. If i scrub the timeline, I can see the phone looks like it's trying to do something, but nothing happens on the TV (no spinning circle) and after about 5 seconds the timeline dot returns to the exact position it was in before I scrubbed it.

Even if I close the app, reopen and reconnect to the Chromecast, the controls will still not respond. Once it reaches this state, I have to stop the cast entirely.

Worse still is sometimes I can not even disconnect from the chromecast once it reaches this point. I can click on the Stop button, I can click on the X, nothing. I have to go into Google Home and select my Chromecast and click on Stop Casting to shut the stream down.

Really annoying to be sure.

Plex app version 2026.13.0
Manage app if unused > disabled
Allow background usage > enabled > Unrestricted

I don't remember if this was always a thing, but I"m pretty sure I had this issue on the old app, but it was resolved at some point. I just know that now it's become super irritating at the speed at which the connection drops from first launch to whenever I need to control something.

Thanks in advance.

So I'll start with the TL;DR, then expand.

TL:DR
Watching episodes of CSI or House of the Dragon on my Chromecast in bedroom, at some point during the episode, it stops the current episode and begins loading the next episode. Does not happen on Hisense TV with Plex app in living room.

Long Version
I have a 3rd gen Chromecast connected to my bedroom TV. It will play most of my TV shows without issue. But I first noticed when I started watching the first season of CSI Vegas that it would play for a few minutes, then automatically jump to the next episode. Every episode did this.

I tried watching it downstairs on my Hisense TV with the Plex app, and it played the whole episode through. Now House of the Dragon is doing it.

I have my suspicions but it doesn't make sense that it works on one device and not the other if the issue was related to 'mistaking' the commercial break cuts as 'end of episode, next episode' triggers. Also might be the way the file is encoded? Both of these series are in x265.. other series that do work (Law n Order, Your Honour) are x264.

My PLEX server uses hardware transcoding on a 3060ti. The server shows no signs of struggle when playing the file. There is no stutter or issues with the episode.. just the instant out of the blue 'Next Episode' jump coming out of nowhere.

Happens when launching PLEX through either my Android phone or my wifes iPhone so it's not localised to a phone model.

Help?