My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

Re:My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answeri... by michaelmrose on Saturday February 16, 2019 @03:08AM (#19177651)

Choosing to block 8.8.8.8 for devices in your own home is neither censorship nor breaking the free and open nature of the internet. It is baffling how you could imagine it is.

It is in fact strange that a device that facilitates streaming from a variety of servers needs to resolve a particular dns server to function. Its obvious that it should need to resolve SOME dns server to function but not a particular one.

Clearly it can't update if it can't talk to google but why shouldn't it be able to play local content or stream netflix without talking to a particular google IP?

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Re:My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answeri... by kllrnohj on Saturday February 16, 2019 @01:16PM (#19179997)

> Clearly it can't update if it can't talk to google but why shouldn't it be able to play local content or stream netflix without talking to a particular google IP?

All cast apps & authentication are provided by Google's servers. Once it begins streaming from Netflix then Google isn't involved, but they handle initiation of that connection. Same for local content. And they don't exactly need to hijack DNS to figure out that you're watching Netflix after they launch the Netflix app.

And they know when streaming stops. Hence why it switches back to the slide show screensaver when you leave Netflix stopped for a minute or two.

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