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Max. number of Routers AND POINTS in a single WiFi netwrok (SSID)?

r3c4ll
Community Member

In this article https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7182840

 

What this section means?

Maximum number of points

We recommend a maximum of five Wifi points in a single network.  Adding more may be detrimental to Wi-Fi performance.

It means "by router" or generally in "one" network... because in the first case I can understand the reasons but. If it is literally as it is written, you can't setup a network with 3 three packs of Nest Wifi cabling the Nest Routers to the main switch? (A network SSID formed with 3 Nest Routers and 6 Nest points?

2 Recommended AnswerS

olavrb
Platinum Product Expert
Platinum Product Expert

Max five in total if going wireless backhaul. That includes the main point/ router, in other words all Nest Wifi pucks communicating with each other wirelessly.

If you go all Nest Wifi routers or Google Wifi (both with ethernet ports) and wired backhaul only, and the size of the place allows it, you might have success with more than five.

More pucks isn't neccessarily better, too many will give you worse performance due to wireless interference and overhead of the wireless mesh backhaul.


I don't work for Google.

View Recommended Answer in original post

MichaelP
Diamond Product Expert
Diamond Product Expert

Hello @r3c4ll 

In addition to the advice from @olavrb I just wanted to add that it sounds like you're planning to connect three Nest WiFi Routers to an existing "outer" network and set them up with the same SSID as each other. In that case, each one will be limited to 5 Nest WiFi Point units. However, I would advise against doing this for several reasons. First, they will all still be sharing a single 5GHz channel with each other. So, significant traffic on such a large network may cause performance and reliability issues.

Second, even though they all have the same SSID, these three networks won't be integrated with each other in a way that allows for smooth hand-off between access points and routers from each of them. This may result in clients getting "stuck" to a router or access point in one even after moving fairly far away. For example, they may end up dropping from 5GHz (which has relatively short range) to 2.4GHz just to stay on the network they were on already.

Edit: Third, as an extension to the above, since each Router unit will also be a firewall that creates a new "inner" network, clients connected to each network will not be able to see or connect to clients connected to any of the other networks.

Lastly, such a large network is pretty far outside the intended and supported usage for this product. I would investigate alternative products intended for larger scale deployments such as this. I would also invest in running Ethernet cabling to support such a deployment.

View Recommended Answer in original post

5 REPLIES 5

olavrb
Platinum Product Expert
Platinum Product Expert

Max five in total if going wireless backhaul. That includes the main point/ router, in other words all Nest Wifi pucks communicating with each other wirelessly.

If you go all Nest Wifi routers or Google Wifi (both with ethernet ports) and wired backhaul only, and the size of the place allows it, you might have success with more than five.

More pucks isn't neccessarily better, too many will give you worse performance due to wireless interference and overhead of the wireless mesh backhaul.


I don't work for Google.

MichaelP
Diamond Product Expert
Diamond Product Expert

Hello @r3c4ll 

In addition to the advice from @olavrb I just wanted to add that it sounds like you're planning to connect three Nest WiFi Routers to an existing "outer" network and set them up with the same SSID as each other. In that case, each one will be limited to 5 Nest WiFi Point units. However, I would advise against doing this for several reasons. First, they will all still be sharing a single 5GHz channel with each other. So, significant traffic on such a large network may cause performance and reliability issues.

Second, even though they all have the same SSID, these three networks won't be integrated with each other in a way that allows for smooth hand-off between access points and routers from each of them. This may result in clients getting "stuck" to a router or access point in one even after moving fairly far away. For example, they may end up dropping from 5GHz (which has relatively short range) to 2.4GHz just to stay on the network they were on already.

Edit: Third, as an extension to the above, since each Router unit will also be a firewall that creates a new "inner" network, clients connected to each network will not be able to see or connect to clients connected to any of the other networks.

Lastly, such a large network is pretty far outside the intended and supported usage for this product. I would investigate alternative products intended for larger scale deployments such as this. I would also invest in running Ethernet cabling to support such a deployment.

r3c4ll
Community Member

Thanks for the answers!

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey r3c4II,

 

It looks like MichaelP and olavrb were able to help you work this out. Before I mark this as resolved, I wanted to check in and see if you had everything you needed or to see if there was more we could do for you. Just let us know if there's more you need.


Thanks,

Jeff

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi all,

As we got our resolution here, I'm going to mark this one as resolved in the next 24 hours. Thanks to all who helped and contributed. If anyone has any other needs, please feel free to let me know before the lock.

Thanks,
Jeff