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[marko]

We received a free Amazon Echo a year or so ago, which I put in a drawer and left there. After much nagging from the wife, I set it up a few weeks ago and she's having a ball!

I trusted Amazon with our Wi-Fi password, something I'm not comfortable with, though I can take care of that easily enough. Something that bothers me more, and I can't find the answer out There...

There are no port forward rules set up, yet I am able to switch lights on and off from outside when my phone is connected via 4G.

I thought that without PF rules, the router would treat that inbound traffic as unsolicited and discard it, (and how does the app on my phone know which ip to send instructions to anyway?) but no, the instructions somehow, get inside the network and the Echo actions them...

How is that happening?

[mwillems]

Two quick possibilities:

1) It may be using your routers UPNP feature if that's enabled on your router.  Router UPNP allows for a sort of ad hoc port forwarding that lots of IoT devices use to bypass routers, and then Amazon just caches your home Ip the same way JRiver does for access keys.

-or-

2) It's also possible that the device is just sending outbound traffic to Amazon's servers and polling for changes, or setting up a tunnel (i.e. the Echo may just be polling Amazon's servers constantly and getting info that way).  In this scenario, your phone may also be communicating with Amazon's servers rather than directly with the Echo.

I'm sure there are other ways too, those are just the one's I've seen in the IoT space.

[zybex]

3) Echo establishes a persistent TCP connection to Amazon servers, and when the server receives a command is just sends it to the device via that connection. This is faster and requires no Polling.

It's either 2 or 3, I think the Echo doesn't use UPnP to open ports.

[mwillems]

3) Echo establishes a persistent TCP connection to Amazon servers, and when the server receives a command is just sends it to the device via that connection. This is faster and requires no Polling.

It's either 2 or 3, I think the Echo doesn't use UPnP to open ports.

Ah, that makes sense and is probably it.

[marko]

Thanks for the thoughts gents. UPnP is turned off in router  settings. Am I correct to think that my lan is still as secure then?

[zybex]

Sure, as long as you trust Amazon to have a persistent 24/7 connection into the microphones in your house...

[wer]

Sure, as long as you trust Amazon to have a persistent 24/7 connection into the microphones in your house...

Haha... That was the perfect answer.

[marko]

Sure, as long as you trust Amazon to have a persistent 24/7 connection into the microphones in your house...

Indeed it was. Honestly, no, I'm not really that comfortable about this, which is why I left it in a drawer untouched for a year or more. The wife's friends, and others in our family have them, and the pressure became unbearable.

This is why I've been paying pretty close attention to what it's up to while she plays bonny with her new toy

-marko

[JimH]

All your base are belong to us.