cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Replies are disabled for this topic. Start a new one or visit our Help Center.

General stability and Wired Backhaul

BenW
Community Member

Hello,

My setup looks as follows 4 Nest Wifi routers. Primary point is directly wired to the modem, then from there to a switch that the remaining three points are connected to (wired) over the house. They all are within range of each other and have excellent connections when used a wireless backhaul instead of the wired. Recently, within the last month or two, (maybe since October) devices have started to drop off of the connection. Specifically, Nest Audio, Chromecast Audio, and on occasion Nvidia shield Pro (2019). Wired devices have no connectivity issues. One of the chromecast audios lost connection and simply will not connect back to the network no matter what I do. 

 

When I contacted support they looked at the logs and said that I was having an IP addressing issue. Devices in the environment are NOT reserved with the exception of a few that fall outside of the IP table. Their suggestion was to remove the wired backhaul and set them up wirelessly. The whole reason I purchased the routers instead of AP's was for the wired backhaul. Should I give up on the Nest wifi and just switch over to velop or orbi? Neither of those systems have the issue of IP table corruption so I'm trying to figure out what direction I should go to resolve it. Going to a wireless backhaul negates the investment I made in a "supported" configuration.  Bouncing the network every couple of days is not a functioning solution. 

13 REPLIES 13

MichaelP
Diamond Product Expert
Diamond Product Expert

Hello @BenW 

I'm about to head out to visit family for the holidays, but I'll try to provide some tips here before I go.

First, what kind of switch did you use? If it's a smart / managed switch, that could cause problems with the loop detection protocol those switches usually have enabled and the way Nest WiFi needs that protocol to work for wired backhaul. If it is a managed switch, see if you can disable loop detection (STP) or enable STP BPDU Flooding. Or just try an inexpensive unmanaged switch for comparison.

It sounds like you have things wired properly, but just to double-check, the primary's WAN Ethernet port is the only thing connected to your modem, and it's LAN Ethernet port is connected to the switch, correct? Then the Nest WiFi secondary unit's WAN Ethernet ports are connected to the switch? Either port should work on those, but you want to pick one and stick with it, so I like to use the WAN port only for consistency. No MoCa adapters, powerline adapters, or anything else in the mix? Just trying to simplify things as much as possible for diagnosis.

Next, I would open up the Google Home app and look at the details for each of those wired secondaries. Make sure the connection type is shown as "wired" for each of them. It should be consistent.

I would also verify the quality of those wires, perhaps by connecting a laptop or something that supports Ethernet to each of them and running a ping test over a long enough time to see consistent results. A ping from a device to the router should  come back in less than 1 millisecond consistently with no lost packets.

I'm not sure what the support team is on about, but if you just disconnect your secondaries from Ethernet, they should immediately start working again using wireless – no need to reset them or anything. It would be worth trying that to see if it makes a difference if only to help narrow down where the issue may be. Connecting them via Ethernet again (one at a time, perhaps) may also be instructive. The whole goal here is to try to narrow down where any problems may be. Running a mesh test will also be instructive, though to see the per-secondary performance results isn't as easy in the Google Home app as it was in the Google WiFi app. 

I wouldn't give up on this. I would just take a systematic approach to attempting to narrow it down. You may have the wrong type of switch, or a bad cable somewhere. It's possible the units are "unhappy" in a way that a factory reset could help with, but I wouldn't start with that myself.

Good luck – I hope some of this is useful.

BenW
Community Member

First and foremost. Please enjoy your family time!

It is a managed switch (nighthawk S8000) it doesn't have any STP settings nor does it seem to have any DHCP server services in the management interface. I did get on another call will support last night and they had me clear the DNS cache as well as manually reboot the entire network. 

It does seem to have made the network more "snappy" but I haven't had a chance to run any test to confirm this as of yet. Right before I called in another of my speakers dropped off and needed to be factory reset. Even after that it threw an error about joining the network but did so anyway. Because of that and the chromecast audio, which haven't tried to readd, it really has me thinking it's an issue with the points themselves. Over the break I'll try to run a few of the tests you mentioned above and see what the results are. They are all connected via the WAN port, I like the consistency as well.

I very much appreciate the response and hope you have a great time with your family!

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey, BenW.

I know you and MichaelP were working on this, but I wanted to check in to see if you were able to make any progress on this or to see if things are still where you left off. Give me a quick update on where things are at here and I'll be happy to help as well if needed.

Thanks.

BenW
Community Member

Ok, so I had a chance to do some testing finally. I unplugged each point and ran a mesh test. The points dropped from great connection to good. All points stayed in the good state but as you mentioned the mesh test is not as informational as one would hope. I also ran a ping test from each point, there were no dropped packets with no ping spikes. I wish there was a way to assign IP to the router points. 

 

I ran the test again and the points went back to great connections. 

 

 

MichaelP
Diamond Product Expert
Diamond Product Expert

Hello @BenW 

I finally got a chance to do a little poking into the switch you're using, and it looks like it does have loop detection features, but does not have a way to disable them. This can definitely be a problem when making wired backhaul work. If you're still having trouble, can you try replacing that switch with something simpler / less expensive / less "fancy"? Keep the packaging and receipts just in case it doesn't end up making a difference.

BenW
Community Member

I'll get a dumb switch in here and see what happens. It's really weird that it's only affecting a handful of devices. Specifically, nest audio pair, google home max, chromecast audio, nvidia shield pro, and an OG google home. What's even more interesting is that two of those are 7-20 feet away from the primary point. 

 

I'll update as soon as I can get the switch in here and go from there. 

BenW
Community Member

I got an even dumber switch in here. I'll update in the next few days and let you know if devices are falling off again. I've also "flushed" the DNS cache again to see if there are any improvements.

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi, BenW.

I just wanted to check in to see if you saw better performance after that last round of troubleshooting or if we need to keep looking at other options. Hopefully things are running better for you now. Let me know if there's more we can do.

Thanks!

BenW
Community Member

Yes and no. Overall it's been a little difficult to track because of power outages due to bad weather. Generally it takes a few days after a reset to start experiencing issues, almost like a buffer overflow. I'll give it another couple of days and report back on that front. 

Something interesting did happen when power was lost a few days ago though, may be worth mentioning. When we lost power the points themselves wouldn't reconnect to the "router" wired or wireless without a hard reboot. After a hard reboot they all did connect pretty quickly after that via the wired backhaul. 

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi, BenW.

Thanks for that update again. Hopefully conditions can calm down a bit and you'll be able to sort out how things should be working long term. The reconnect issue after a power outage has been reported by some other users as well, so that might be something new to keep an eye on.

Thanks.

BenW
Community Member

Yep, no change. Same speaker groups, devices and speakers are dropping off. The #1 offender is sitting less than say 7 feet away from the router. The next is less than 15 feet away, think opposite wall in a different room. The other is in the basement. There's no rhyme or reason to what drops and what doesn't. And now a hub max did it about a day ago, but those need to be rebooted occasionally. (white spinning logo screen)  

It's not the wired network. I know we were all operating off of what support had originally stated but there's not a switch in this environment that even has an interface. What's more is I ran a tracert and ping test from the wires that are connected to each point. There was little to no discernable difference between each location. Something is not right and I've now replaced the networking equipment in the house outside of these. Latency between each point/router and the primary router would make me initially think one of the other points was taking over as the primary, but latency is less than a ms. When sitting in the room about three feet from the primary my minimum ping on wireless is 9ms and max is 69ms. It's not dropping packets though.

It's getting angering now. 

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi, everyone.
Just one quick final check in here since activity has slowed down. We'll be locking the thread in the next 24 hours, but if you still need help, I would be happy to keep it open. If there's more we can do, just let me know.
Thanks.

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi, everyone.
As we haven't had any activity here recently I'm going to go ahead and close the thread. If you have more to add, feel free to start a new discussion.
Thanks