Hello   @dafish 

As far as I know the Switches does not talk to each other locally nor through the tp-link server.

Switch might be controlled through the API by some third-party software locally or can receive commands from the tp-link cloud server, did not hear that switches will talk to each other. 

Perhaps give us some background information about this question so we can understand it better,  thanks. 

  @dafish,

Just to add in my reasonings:

As far as I am aware, current switches do not talk to each other locally(this is the main reason I am looking forward to the matter protocol; as this is the main goal of the protocol)

Your phone is able to communicate with the devices locally, or at least your Kasa application is able to. This is why we often ask users to disconnect from their home network. If the device disappears when off the home network, we know that the problem exists with the connection to the outside internet and servers.

As long as a device is connected to the network, you should be able to control the device in the app, via a command sent over the local network, just not via a command that goes through the cloud servers. This is why it is assumed that if your Smart Action has failed, your device has lost its connection to the cloud.

From what I can tell, the Amazon Servers talk directly to our Cloud Servers. I don't know if this is different for devices set up through Alexa or Homekit, however, I would assume that the vast majority of the devices will be communicating with our cloud directly.

  @dafish,

From what I have been able to tell, you are correct in the way the devices currently operate with the current systems.

I believe that without a Cloud connection, the only settings that are retained are the normal on/off, a few basic configs(such as dimming), and the scheduling function on the device.

Smart Actions will not execute as these are cloud-level interactions and are stored there.

The scheduling feature will operate as long as the devices are able to get a time from the network they are connected to, or are disconnected from a network, as these are stored on the individual devices.

This means that if your network completely goes down and your router can't establish the time, the schedules will not execute. If your entire network goes down, the switch's schedules will still execute as they are able to keep the time themselves, the problem just arises when the switches try to get the time and fail.

This is finicky, however, and our team has not quite figured out how or when the devices fail to get the time.

As long as your device is on the same network that the devices are connected to, internet connection or not, you will be able to control the devices with the Kasa App.

There are a few things that our team is still working out how they work such as:

• Does Alexa or HomeKit Connections create another path to have a device locally control a device
• If one phone is active on a network at all times, can that device be used as a "controller" for your network in case of a cloud failure.