Again? Seriously?

[jonstrong]

Embarrassing coming back here, as I'm starting to feel like a sucker. 

If you were to search my posts here, you'd see that I had a solid, if not spectacular, experience with Google and Nest WiFi for several years. Then, about a year ago, I started having all sorts of problems (like many others here) - slowdowns, signal drops, disconnections, devices offline. This happened on and off several times over a few months. As far as I could tell, the problems were due to multiple firmware updates. I came close to replacing it all with a multi-unit Netgear or Asus mesh, hesitated only as I thought about the money, and each time the Nest WiFi eventually seemed to "settle" into working again - I'm guessing as a stable firmware version had finally been pushed.

For the past few months, it's been OK, if not great. Yesterday into day though has been dreadful. WiFi speeds dropped. I'm on Zoom and Teams calls several times a day - and the experience deteriorated dreadfully. Various nodes in the mesh going offline by themselves. Tonight, after resetting the entire mesh (base router + 3 mesh nodes) for the 4th time, it finally seems to be working reasonably again.  Best guess: firmware update -- forced through to the various devices at arbitrary times -- even when this screws up my experience.

I just checked -- and the Nest router is now at 14150.882.9 -- and as far as I can tell, this is new as of a few days ago. *sigh*. Amazing. This pretty much confirms my suspicion about firmware updates. No warning, dreadful interruption of my ability to work (I work remote part of the time), and no option for me while the updates are being pushed. Lucky I suppose that I was able to communicate at all during the past 24 hours.

Poor experience too many times. Time to choose an alternative.

[himaniyadav]

Can you specify what you did to “reset the entire mesh”? Was this a factory reset or turning on or off. Wondering because I think the same thing happened to me yesterday and I don’t/can’t factory reset the main point/router as I’m in an apartment with 2 units, but I could try to reset my pucks.

[jonstrong]

I reset the main router - a few times. A couple of times using the Home app, going to the WiFi tab, displaying the page for the main router, and selecting the option to reset the entire mesh.

Other times I unplugged the units (a couple of times the main unit, other times a couple of nodes), waited about 30 seconds and reconnected them.

A couple of days later...it's more stable. Sometimes pretty fast, other times dismally slow. Thinking it's finally time to move on.

[kferbs]

I'm having the same exact issue. One of my access points will randomly drop causing whatever is attached to either switch to another access point or, if limited by signal strength, drop. Also, random drops of devices. If I reset (usually, I just unplug all routers because anything else is a shorter fix). Lately, I'm doing this at least once a day. My support case is escalated so we'll see but I'm about to just reach out to Fios to see if I'm eligible for an upgraded router since it's included in my cost and see if that upgrade covers my whole place now... 

[Dan_A]

Hi folks,

That certainly isn’t the experience we want you to have and apologies for the delay. A few questions: are you using a modem/router combo from your Internet Service Provider (ISP)? Also, do you have any paused devices?
 

Give these steps a try:

1. If you're using a modem/router combo, set that to bridge mode to avoid double NAT issues.
2. Make sure that there is minimal to no interference (concrete, bulletproof glass, metal, mirror, etc.) and the points are no more than two rooms apart.
3. Remove any special characters in your network name and password.
4. Turn off IPv6:
   1. Open the Google Home app Google Home app.
   2. Tap the Wi-Fi coin  and then Settings Settings. 
   3. Scroll down and tap Advanced networking.
   4. Scroll down to IPv6.
   5. Toggle the switch off Toggle button off.
5. Change your DNS server into 8.8.8.8 on the primary and 8.8.4.4 on the secondary server. Hit the save/ floppy disk icon on the upper right.
6. Unplug the power from your Google Wifi devices for 2 minutes.
7. If the issue persists, try factory resetting your network. Take note that this will delete all network data.

You may skip any step that you’ve done already.

Let us know how it goes.

Best,

Dan