AC1200 and the "Globe" Ethernet Question

[herbaguayo]

I have 3 of the AC1200 units in my home, one directly connected to my cable modem, the other two doing their "mesh magic" and talking to the connected one.

As part of a remodel, I have the ability to run Cat5 to the rooms where the two that are not connected to the router.

My question is, can I put the cable modem connected point into an "unmanaged network switch", then run that new Cat 5 from the switch to the other 2 points (into the globe port)? Will that do anything to improve or strengthen the signal from the other two points, or is that something only done with the more expensive (gen2) versions?

[MichaelP · Accepted solution]

Hello @herbaguayo 

You can do that, and it does improve performance, in some cases significantly. Here's a support article with lots of details: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7215624?hl=en 

But, the short version is:

Your current "primary" Google WiFi unit should remain the only one wired directly into your cable modem (via it's WAN / "globe" Ethernet port). An inexpensive, unmanaged Ethernet switch connected to the primary unit's LAN ("<->") Ethernet port will make more ports available on the "inner" network created by your primary unit. Use those ports to connect Ethernet cables run anywhere you want in the house (I would use Cat5e, but Cat6 would be fine as well – Cat5 without the "e" may be fine, as long as the runs are short). Connect those cable runs to either Ethernet port on the secondary Google WiFi units. It shouldn't matter which, but pick one and stick with it consistently (don't unplug from one and plug into the other one while the system is powered on).

Once you've done all of that, check the details for each secondary and make sure they show as being connected "wired" rather than "mesh".

Then, re-run a mesh test and make sure both secondary units show "great" ratings (if they are wired and show "good" instead of "great", it may indicate one of the cable runs is not connecting with all of the wire pairs, falling back to 100Mbps instead of 1Gbps).

This works well, and I have done this with original and updated versions of Google WiFi.

[herbaguayo]

Thank you for the awesome insight and link, plus the net-net version. Totally makes sense, and now I'm eager to try it out and see it in action.