Obscure Avahi-Daemon Question

[orinocopaul]

Running a clean OpenWRT install with two separate VLANS; one hosting a Windows machine; one hosting a Chromecast device. Firewall is ok; mDNS ports are open. The avahi-reflector is up and running.

For once, the avahi-reflector (yellow) does a great job and accurately reflects the query from the Windows machine (violet). Connection between the Chrome browser and the Chromecast device is established. Everything honky dory!

For the next 18 times or so, the avahi-reflector (yellow) reflects the altered query from above. Note: it does not end in "QM" question like the orginal. Instead, it reads "QM" question PTR Chromecast-8cc2b..... . This allows no connection btw. the Chrome browser and the Chromecast device.

The only way for a successful connection to occur is to wait out the cycle of 18 bad avahi-repeats. After that, it will reproduce a single accurate repeat, before resuming bad repeats for another 18 times, and so on.

Why this anomaly?

[orinocopaul]

Solved!

Add cache-entries-max=0 to your /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf file and it will reflect chromecast symmetrically across multiple subnets. All it takes to increase reliability from 10% to 100% on Windows machines. macOS does not care: works either way!

[server]
#host-name=foo
#domain-name=local
use-ipv4=yes
use-ipv6=yes
cache-entries-max=0
check-response-ttl=no
use-iff-running=no