There was a glitch in the operation of Xiaomi gadgets in Russia. What caused the problem?

In early October, owners of Xiaomi gadgets from Russia and Belarus began to complain about problems with the devices. Owners of robotic vacuum cleaners, kettles, light bulbs, routers, cameras, doorbells and other smart home devices could not use the devices as usual.

The largest number of error messages appeared on the evening of October 4th. Residents of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar and other Russian cities experienced problems logging into the application and managing gadgets. Also, Russians could not log into their personal account on the Xiaomi website. Attempts to restart or reinstall the software or activate the VPN led to nothing. By the morning of October 5, the problem was partially corrected.

The company confirmed the failure

Among the versions of massive problems in the operation of the ecosystem, they also named the possible blocking of Xiaomi servers by Roskomnadzor. However, the department stated that the regulator does not block any foreign services on the territory of the Russian Federation.

On the evening of October 4, the Chinese corporation confirmed that they were seeing problems on their side. “We are trying to fix it as quickly as possible, please wait,” the company’s Russian representative office responded to users.

The problem could be related to Xiaomi’s Russian servers

Many users noted that the failure occurred with equipment produced and imported directly for Russia. This is explained by the fact that devices connected through Russian servers did not work. At the same time, gadgets connected to the ecosystem through Chinese servers functioned normally for the most part.

In Russia, the work of Xiaomi services and gadgets is based on interaction with the local Content Delivery Network (CDN) – a network infrastructure that allows you to optimize the delivery and distribution of content. CDN offers faster data access and is also resistant to DDoS attacks. However, there are only a few dozen large CDNs, so if the system is blocked or crashes, the entire infrastructure may not work at once.

Xiaomi devices are highly dependent on servers

Most Xiaomi gadgets – smart cameras, vacuum cleaners, doorbells, smart scales – do not work or function to a limited extent without communication with a third-party server. Through a remote connection, devices share data, interact with other equipment, and update firmware.

The company has not yet commented on the reasons for what happened, so it is impossible to name the exact cause of the mass failure. According to the head of the development department of the corporate messenger Compass, Fedor Chernov, Xiaomi’s flaw is that the company does not provide clarity about what is happening. “If an accident occurs in a company that affects the performance of services, it is necessary to bring people up to date in real time,” the specialist believes.