Nest WiFi Pro wired backhaul concern

[dfh1]

Is this normal behavior?

My configuration: Nest Wifi Pro router and cable modem sit in attic. Nest Wifi Pro point is in the office about 40 feet away. Router and Point are connected with a 50 foot cat6 cable for backhaul.

My laptop sits in the office about 2 feet from the Point and normally will get wifi service from it. Note that the laptop connection is wifi, not wired. Speed test shows speeds around 160Mbps. However, if I unplug the Point, forcing my laptop to be served by the Router, I see speeds around 360Mbps. 

Does this sound right? I would expect a wired 1G backhaul to degrade speeds a little, but not by half. Thoughts?

[MichaelP]

Hello @dfh1 

There are a few things that could be going wrong here. First, it's possible the Ethernet cable isn't quite managing to maintain 1Gbps consistently and is "flapping" between 100Mbps and 1Gbps. I would try to test that cable with something like a laptop or computer that has an Ethernet port to ensure it can consistently maintain the higher speed.

The second thought I have is that your laptop may actually be too close to the secondary access point. WiFi radios are low power, but at very short distances (less than about 3 feet), they can end up causing distortion in the signal. Sort of like shouting directly into someone's ear. I would try moving your laptop further away – start with 6 feet just to be sure this is or isn't the issue.

I would also suggest using Ethernet to connect your laptop if at all possible, at least when it's in a fixed position in your office. WiFi is convenient, but wires are usually more stable and reliable.

[dfh1]

Thanks, MichaelP!

I've tried those suggestions and am seeing the same results. First, I moved the Point about 6 or 7 feet from the laptop and see roughly 100Mbps speed test when served by the Point and roughly 360Mbps speed when served wirelessly by the Router. I have to power off the Point to get service switched over to the Router.

As for testing the cable: the cable is 50 foot cat6 that runs from the Router LAN port to the Point WAN port. I then connect the laptop to the Point LAN port and see a speed test of 360Mbps -- the same speed that the wireless connections to the Router are getting. I think that rules out a buggy cat6 cable.

So, maybe this is the expected behavior of the mesh architecture -- this degradation is just not what I expected.

[dfh1]

OK, in my opinion, this is not what I expected. What I failed to mention in my original post was that my laptop is using the guest network on the Point. Didn't see how that could be relevant. However, I just logged into the home network on the laptop and am seeing full speed 360Mbps. When I log back into the guest network then I see the reduced speeds. Again, not what I expected. Looks like the guest network is throttled.

I'm finding it hard to integrate the Nest Wifi Pro mesh system into by home. I was using the guest network because I found it more secure than the home network. What I mean is that I have two classes of devices: devices that I really want to secure and devices that are basically IOT. Some of the IOT devices, like cameras or media servers for ROKU, need to be able to "see" each other and thus are incompatible with the guest network. Putting the IOT devices on the home network where every device can see every other device, is incompatible with my desire to protect my secure devices. So, I am using the guest network for my more secure devices -- clearly not a use-case for the Nest WiFi Pro.

I guess what I'd like is to have more of the built-in firewall exposed to users. I would like to allow devices on the guest network to see each other, but not see devices on the home network, unless white-listed. It would also be nice for the firewall to report any intrusion attempts. 

Whew ... sorry for the rant.

[MichaelP]

Fascinating. I saw your earlier reply, and I couldn't think of an explanation. Now, it sounds like you've discovered the bottleneck is the guest network. I am surprised the impact is that significant, but there is a lot more security applied to devices on the guest network. For one, their traffic is carried in a VLAN on the wired backhaul, and it's possible that has to be done by the CPUs on each Nest WiFi Pro unit rather than being done in hardware. I wouldn't expect that to hurt quite this much, but it sure looks like it is.

As for your IoT use-case, I guess I probably wouldn't expect super flexible configurability from this system. They are very much intended to be easy to use.

[dfh1]

Thanks MichaelP - Seems like active throttling down to me since my network is so lightly loaded that prioritizing devices (an existing capability) likely wouldn't create this much degradation. I wonder if the engineers read these comments -- since VLANs are already implemented then why not a home, a guest and a new IOT vlan, each with the appropriate security rules? Might make for a good business case to incorporate enhanced security for customers who are looking to isolate the plethora of IOT devices -- like smart speakers, smart TVs, doorbells, cameras, locks, etc. The security problem with all that stuff is scary. 

[MichaelP]

I really don't think it's intentional throttling. Older versions of the product didn't do that, and I certainly haven't seen any features that would do that on purpose. The newer Nest WiFi Pro units have chips that do more in hardware, and have relatively less powerful CPUs as a result. That's why I suspect there is some aspect of guest network being carried over Ethernet that has additional overhead. The only thing I can think of, though, is VLAN encapsulation, which is only needed for the Ethernet link to keep that traffic segregated until it gets to the main unit. It doesn't seem like the team is aggressively pursuing new features right now. They have something that works well enough for most people who don't have advanced needs. I don't think they want to expand their market beyond that.

[dfh1]

Thank you MichaelP, I appreciate your insights here!