Sever Addresses outside of the USA

Troubleshooting
1

I am trying to understand if it is intentional that the Rachio is sending data to servers outside of the United States. While I understand that AWS servers run around the globe, I find it odd that my Rachio is sending data to servers in countries like:

  • Russia (46.17.46.226)
  • Czechia (195.113.20.2)
  • Armenia (46.19.96.19)
  • Bulgaria (195.85.215.215)
  • Belarus(82.209.245.153)
  • Pakistan (119.159.246.253)
  • Turkey (195.33.242.132)
  • Ukraine(91.236.251.29)

all in the last seven days.

I am asking the question because I want Rachio to understand if there something else going on that you are not aware of.
None of the other IoT devices I have in my house send data to these countries.

Cheers
-Jeff

1 Like
2

Did you happen to capture the port the data initially goes out to? Rachio primarily uses secure MQTT connection to AWS (port 8883).
Theoretically controller should connect to one of these:
capture

Anyway you can (wireshark) capture what is happening during bootup?

— Likely answer —

Searching through the IPs you’ve listed, a lot of them seem to be a part of the europe.pool.ntp.org (have not checked the complete list to be completely sure). In any case seems that your controller is trying to get it’s time from one of the European NTP servers… Data should not be encrypted, meaning that wireshark or packet capture should provide a definete confirmation.

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3

Yes all of the IP’s I supplied have destination ports of 123 (NTP). The controller does ping US and non US based NTP hosts. I do not see any non-NTP requests outside of the US.

It makes no sense to me why NTP requests would be going over seas. Seems to me it defeats the purpose of time syncing when there is so much latency when sending to IP across so many other countries.
It also worries me that NTP DDOS could be possible, if the Rachio is sending NTP request to a set of NTP servers it really isn’t configure to talk to.

Cheers
-Jeff

1 Like
4

Good question. As far as I know controller itself is not aware of the position data, all of the processing is done on the Rachio server. It’s possible that US and European NTP servers are hardcoded (have to reboot mine to confirm) and data from the server with lowest latency is used.

What generation of Rachio controller do you have? 1,2 or 3?

5

Because it’s simpler to just query pool.ntp.org than to figure out which zone would be appropriate for a given controller.

Also, it’s more robust; if a zone were taken out by an attack, the controller would still eventually pull the correct time.

First order, latency doesn’t degrade accuracy because the delays in each direction are very closely matched.

Just for laughs, I tried:

# ntpdate -q us.pool.ntp.org
server 64.225.34.103, stratum 2, offset -0.008044, delay 0.03348
server 68.233.45.146, stratum 2, offset -0.002144, delay 0.07866
server 45.33.31.34, stratum 2, offset -0.000468, delay 0.06360
server 198.98.58.17, stratum 3, offset -0.004388, delay 0.09660
27 Dec 11:03:08 ntpdate[15876]: adjust time server 64.225.34.103 offset -0.008044 sec

# ntpdate -q europe.pool.ntp.org
server 147.78.228.41, stratum 2, offset -0.002064, delay 0.18588
server 185.111.204.220, stratum 2, offset 0.000933, delay 0.17934
server 79.133.44.137, stratum 1, offset 0.002737, delay 0.17409
server 94.198.159.11, stratum 2, offset 0.000045, delay 0.18059
27 Dec 11:03:44 ntpdate[15998]: adjust time server 79.133.44.137 offset 0.002737 sec

The European servers were actually somewhat closer to my system clock.
But in any case, given Rachio’s job, a time offset of even a second or two would not be an issue. Accurate time is mostly useful for debugging, when you need to compare activities in controller, app and back end.

1 Like
6

Good point @Stewart, just because IPs were found in europe.pool.ntp.org, doesn’t mean that Rachio is not using a genetic pool.ntp.org which may return european servers to spead the load accross avaialble servers. I think you nailed it.

:cheers: on your point that delays in the NTP transmittion are taken into account. :+1:

7

@Stewart I agree on the time syncing latency. There isn’t anything so time sensitive on the Rachio to require low latency syncing, which is part of the point I was making. I wouldn’t expect time drift of the microcontroller to be that bad. Also the mobile app could also be used to help with they syncing.

I also can appreciate the generic pool.ntp.org approach, but the Rachio does have geo location data available, since the configuration sent to the controller at setup is required for the weather and advanced features.

My ntpdate results for kicks:

ntpdate -q us.pool.ntp.org
server 172.98.193.44, stratum 2, offset -0.001426, delay 0.07809
server 129.250.35.250, stratum 2, offset -0.001496, delay 0.05060
server 162.243.194.203, stratum 2, offset -0.000619, delay 0.08731
server 129.250.35.251, stratum 2, offset 0.001958, delay 0.05566
27 Dec 13:37:53 ntpdate[29728]: adjust time server 129.250.35.250 offset -0.001496 sec

ntpdate -q europe.pool.ntp.org
server 95.217.188.206, stratum 2, offset 0.002301, delay 0.19128
server 195.33.242.132, stratum 2, offset 0.002226, delay 0.21710
server 192.33.96.102, stratum 1, offset -0.002491, delay 0.18414
server 136.243.202.118, stratum 2, offset 0.000347, delay 0.18605
27 Dec 13:38:07 ntpdate[29730]: adjust time server 192.33.96.102 offset -0.002491 sec

Have a nice holiday season.
Cheers
-Jeff

8

Rachio controller itself is pretty straigtforward schedule tracker. Time is kept on the dedicated timeclock IC with battery backup and the controller only knows upcomming schedule it should adhere to.

Controller itself does not know the location, moisure levels or weather info, instead the server keeps track of everything and sends updated schedule on the regular basis. This allows Rachio to make adjustments and improvements to the weather tracker on the server & not have to do firmware updates to implement them on the controllers.

9

@Gene @Stewart @jdcalus

Just kidding. Cool that there are a few of you in here with deep networking knowledge!

1 Like
10

It’s pretty straighforward, once you realize it’s simply a series of tubes…