My TP-Link devices (11 total: 2x HS100, 2x HS105, 6x HS200, 1x KP400) have been stable for more than 6 months now. I decided it was time to block all communication to the outside world.
From my router, I prevent all WAN IN & WAN OUT communication from each HS* device IP address.
From my Pi-Hole, I blacklisted all DNS lookups for *.tplinkcloud.com. This blocks requests for devs.tplinkcloud.com, n-deventry.tplinkcloud.com and n-devs-tplinkcloud.com.
Local operations work as expected. No access from the Kasa App (as expected).
What I did not expect was that these 11 TP-Link devices are now 9 of the top 10 clients in the PiHole Blocked list and 66% of all DNS requests)… i.e. I didn’t realize how often they communicate with their cloud overlords until now.
Has anyone found a firmware update to put these devices into true standalone mode? (minimize outbound requests from the device. only speak when spoken to. etc…)
I found this on the TP-Link Community Forum. …and this elsewhere in the home-assistant world. but I didn’t find the incantations to get these devices to quiet down.
I wish I had isolated the TP-link devices sooner. Really glad I have them walled off now.
If I could cut down on the DNS chatter that would be nice.