Nest Wifi (gen 1) is only getting 100 down and up despite main router providing 900 down and up.

[NestWiFi100100]

Hello there, I recently changed my ISP and they provide me with 900 download and upload, both wired and on wireless.

I have a Nest Wifi (Gen 1). When I check my ISP's router web portal, it says the Google Wifi is a 100mbps device despite everything else plugged into it being 1gb, which is a major inconvenience because the Nest Wifi is, by all accounts, the only WiFi that matters in this house as it's the only one that reaches around the house.

I did manage to get the Nest Wifi to perform as I expected it to once by unplugging it both via the ethernet port and plug, but it has since gone back to providing only 100mbps.

Is there anything I can do?

[MichaelP]

Hello @NestWiFi100100 

Any time I see an Ethernet connection that should be running at 1Gbps actually running at 100Mbps, I suspect the cable or (less likely, but still possible) one of the ports on either end of the cable. So, I would start out by swapping out the cable connecting your Google WiFi unit to your ISP equipment. Don't bother using Cat6 or better cables – Cat5e is just fine, and can be better, since it's not as stiff as Cat6.

One of the things that can happen, especially with stiffer cables like Cat6+ is, if there's a bit of a bend the cable does near the port it connects it, one of the outer pins can fail to make a solid, reliable connection. Since 1Gbps needs all eight pins to be connected reliably, one pin having a poor connection can cause the port to renegotiate down to 100Mbps speed. 

[f1zzball]

Due to performance issues I recently decided to upgrade from a Nest WiFi 5 system to Wifi Pro 6.... the WiFi 5 Mesh limited overall WiFi performance due to it's dual-channel architecture effectively halving the Internet perforamance as WiFi AP's were added.... the Wifi Pro seeks to solve this problem using the 6Ghz band as it's backhaul channel, thus not impacting the 2.4 & 5Ghz data channels, thus I looked forward to maximising my 250Mb/s Interent connection for the first time with the WiFi 6 adoption.
The WiFi 6 (I got a 3-pack) was easy enough to setup... much quicker to commission each point than the v5 predecessor (good job Google!). I initially setup a WiFi 6 point as a router, and plugged its LAN port into my 1Gbp/s Microtik switch. I then configured the other two points wirelessly and ran a Speedtest from the Google Home app... 247Mbp/s - nice. However, when running a Speedtest from a WiFi connected device, I could only achieve 88Mbp/s? This was a big improvement from the 25Mbp/s I was getting from my WiFi 5 solution, but far short of my 250Mbp/s Interent service. Upon investigation I found the LAN port on the router would not negotiate 1Gbp/s, regardless of how many factory resets of the Nest point I did. I also tried configuring the switch port to only negotiate 1Gbp/s however the best it would offer is 100Mbp/s. I checked some older Internet routers I had and they would instantly connect at 1Gbp/s so something weird is happening within the WiFi 6 LAN ports speed negotiation.
I then tried plugging in the points WAN port to the switch, and sure enought it negotiated at 1Gbp/s? So pretty sure there's some firmware issue with the Next 6 points that is impacting their LAN port speed. 
Thus I reversed my setup by configuring my network switch as a DHCP server, then plugging in the WAN port to the switch; then as my switch supported Layer 3, I configured a dedicated port on it as the WAN port which I connected to my ISP router. Oddly the switch port connected to the point's WAN port fell back to 100Mbp/s however when I reconfigured the swtich to only offer 1Gbp/s Full Duplex, sure enough the WAN port connected at 1Gbp/s. I then proceeded to setup my remaining 2 points in the mesh, and running a speed test from a WiFi connected device resulted in 246 Mbp/s - finally! 
So what's the morale of this story - don't connect the LAN ports on your Nest WiFi Pro system. By setting up as I've done I'm effectively double-natting as you can't disable DHCP from the Nest environment (using Bridge mode doesn't work if you want multple devices in your mesh). But i've found no issues with using double-nat, so a happy camper! 
My resulting setup.... 2x Nest AP's + 1x Nest AP (router mode) --> AP router WAN port connected to LAN switch --> LAN switch connected to my ISP. 

[f1zzball]

… just another setup tip for those trying to diagnose performance issues on a Mesh setup. In the Google Home app, select each AP and under settings, click on Device Name and change the default name to something unique e.g. ‘Living Room AP’. Then if you want to identify which AP point a device is connected to, go to the ‘Devices’ section in the Home app that lists all the devices  that are connected to your mesh network. Select the device you’re interested in, and it will then show you the name of the AP that device is connected to. Sometimes if an end  user device is having performance issues it could be that it’s not holding a connection to the nearest Nest AP. If this is the case, then switching off and on your device’s WiFi should result in it negotiating a new connection to the closest AP. 

[f1zzball]

… final tip I promise! It looks like the Nest will use the least busy channel as it’s wireless backhaul, which in my case is generally going to be 6Ghz because I have a dozen 2.4/5 GHz wireless cameras hooked up. I noticed my recent iPad and iPhone models would connect at 6Ghz, and getting reasonable performance, ~200Mbps on a 250Mbs Internet link. However when I disabled WiFi 6 on my Apple IOS devices they reconnected to the mesh using 5Ghz, and their performance improved to around 240Mbps. I can only assume because having them on 6Ghz slows the wireless backhaul slightly. Just something you can easily test; the option to disable 6 in IOS is found under the WiFi profile settings. 

[MichaelP]

Nest WiFi Pro uses a single 6GHz channel for both the mesh interconnect and for 6GHz client traffic. 2.4GHz and 5GHz are for client traffic only on Nest WiFi Pro. So,yes, if you have 6GHz clients connected to a wireless secondary/point Nest WiFi Pro unit, their traffic will be going through the same channel twice (once to the access point, and again from the access point through the mesh to the primary Nest WiFi Pro unit).

This is similar to how the older Nest WiFi (non-Pro) and Google WiFi used their 5GHz radios (for both mesh and 5GHz client traffic), leaving their 2.4GHz radios for client traffic only.

The only part of the system that measures channel usage is in the 2.4GHz band, where each access point selects one of the three useful channels (1, 6, or 11). In the 5GHz band, they use a single channel that is preconfigured and determined by the region (e.g., 149/155 for U.S.).