Main node has ISP rated speeds, upstairs node is less than half

[soandso]

Just set up Google Nest WiFi Pro.  Honestly it was a bit of a nightmare - nearly everything that could go wrong did.  ISP required name, serial number and MAC address to connect to their fiber network.  Even then, they goofed up and I was without any network at all for 26 hours. I called both their support and Google's, and found their level 1 support a bit disappointing.  Rebooting for 6 times with a null result and expecting a 7th reboot to be the answer (without changing anything) was the very definition of insanity.

Made it through the other side and have 3 total nodes working.  I did a wifi speed test downstairs at the main node and got 950Mbps, roughly for both up and down links.  Upstairs, I am only getting  480/256 Mbps on a remote node.  All 3 nodes show "Great connection", but show no quantifiable intra-mesh speeds.  Is this as good as it gets?

Upstairs, the node is sitting on a table in the hallway at the top of the stairs.  My office is 8 steps away.  If I lean in my chair, I can see the node, but it is not in direct line of sight for my PC.  I would expect to be doing a little better, considering this is a new product.  My house is only 2200 sq ft, but long.  It is an old house constructed in the 1850's, made of true 2x4's and horsehair plaster and lath.  There's no wire mesh in the wall.

Are there any other diagnostics that can be done?  Or is this it? 

As an aside, I am a technical person, so I find it disconcerting to have no quantifiable results available, such as between nodes.  I'm the kind of guy that would run iperf3 and other bandwidth and latency tests between servers, so this dumbed down networking stuff is a bit opaque to me.  What does "Great connection" actually mean?  I thought the point of mesh routing was to do much better than a repeater (which gives you 50%).  Am I mistaken?

[Dan_A]

Hi soandso,

That certainly isn’t the experience we want you to have, and we apologize for the delay. A few questions: are you using a modem/router combo from your Internet Service Provider (ISP)? What device are you using to set up your network (iOS or Android)? Do you have the Internet on your modem?
 

You can do a sequential reboot of your entire network and see if that helps, or please perform a 2-minute power cycle on your entire network to re-establish the connection on your connected devices. Here's how: 
 

1. Disconnect the power from the modem.
2. Disconnect the Ethernet cable and power cord from the parent point.
3. Disconnect the power cord from the child points.
4. Leave everything unplugged for 2 minutes.
5. Connect the power cord to the modem then to your router and points.

Also, you can 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.
   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

[soandso]

I'm using Google Home on Android for the set up of the Nest WiFi Pro.  The downstairs router is the main node and is connected to the fiber modem.  If I am downstairs and in that room, internet wireless connectivity is at the rated level (over 950 Mbps,) using Quad9 and Cloudflare for DNS servers.  There's no double NAT to my knowledge.

There are no special characters in the network name.  What do you mean by special characters at a password level?  Can you list them?  Why might they matter?

IP6 is off.

Upstairs there are two mirrors, one in the bedroom office, and one on a hallway door.  However, I stood in the hallway in direct line of sight with the second node (wireless back haul) 8 feet away and did the speedtest again.  I get the same results as in my office, about 450Mbps up, and 300Mbps down. 

Since I get 950+Mbps at the first node with line of sight, and only 450Mbps on the second node with line of sight, it seems something is amiss.  The second node has been power cycled several times, the speed remains the same (within some standard deviation).

I've done the reboot the whole network thing, (several times) and that doesn't change the performance.  Since I'm seeing rated speeds at the main node, I'd say it was not a DNS issue.  It seems to indicate a back haul issue, but that is speculation on my part. 

The main node speedtest (from the app) and a simple wireless network speedtest.net agree if my laptop is in line of sight of the main node.

Any other observations or suggestions are welcome.  Thanks for trying to help, it is appreciated.

[Dan_A]

Hey there,

Thanks for the information. Could you send us the topology of your devices and their distance from each other? Are you using a switch to connect them?

Looking forward to your response.

Regards,

Dan

[soandso]

Main node is on first floor nearest the street.  Exiting the room one sees the front door and a stairwell going to the second floor.  The second node is four feet away from the stairs.  My computer is 15 feet away from the second node.  The signal can either go through the doorway and bounce around the room, or it can penetrate the plaster wall.  There's a third node which is downstairs, it is one room away from the first node.  The third node through put is slightly higher than second node, but only by 50Mbps or so.

There are no switches or physical wires between the nodes, it's all wireless.  This is an old house, ca. 1851, they didn't even have electricity when it was built, unlike my daughter's new condo with CAT6 in the walls everywhere. 

Hope that describes the situation a little better. 

[soandso]

In case you are wondering, yes, I do occasionally see apparent multipath fade from street traffic.

[soandso]

Seems to be a wireless back haul problem as I suspected.  I temporarily installed an ethernet cable cat5E (all I had that was long enough) wired to a dumb switch and achieved 662Mbps down and 428Mbps up. Without the cable it is: 179/14.3 Mbps.  The main node showed  972/987.  This is a simple experiment, with cable and without.

It seems the metrics for OTA mesh quality are grossly inadequate for QOS.  They say the connection is great, when clearly the measured performance shows otherwise.  It appears to me it is a false metric.  I cannot have an ethernet cable going up my main staircase.  The performance of the mesh  router is inferior to even a cheap repeater.  It's worse than the ISP's router solution.  Rather disappointed in the Google Nest WiFi Pro mesh performance, and the fact there hasn't been a response in two weeks.  There's clearly some technical problem, but sadly this product lacks any tools to diagnose issues.  I cannot recommend this product to anyone that lives in a two (or more) story home without wired back haul.    It doesn't cut the mustard.

[Dan_A]

Hello there,

I understand your frustration with the performance of your Google Nest Wifi Pro mesh system and the delayed response from us. You've conducted a great experiment by testing wireless vs. wired backhaul, clearly demonstrating the significant performance drop when relying solely on wireless connection.We appreciate all your efforts. We'd like to take a deeper look into this for you. Please fill out this form with all the needed information, and then let us know once you're done.

Kind regards,

Dan

[Dan_A]

Hello again,

We haven't received your form. Have you had a chance to fill it out?

Thanks,

Dan