Nest wifi pro kicking all my Ring devices offline

[Thaiphlosion]

I recently had Google fiber installed in my household and switched my ring devices over from our previous wifi to the Google nest wifi network. However, by the next morning all my Ring devices went offline. This has never happened before with the previous isp wifi. And once the devices are kicked offline, I am unable to reconnect them unless I reboot the router. However, every time I reboot the router to reconnect my ring devices, it eventually kicks them all offline again.

There seems to be a serious issue with the latest Google Nest Wifi Pro and Ring devices in that the band steering of the Google nest wifi pro does not always allocate the 2.4ghz frequency to the Ring devices. (Ring can only operate on 2.4ghz) Eventually it will switch the ring devices to a 5.0ghz band and cause them to go offline.

I've spent the last few days attempting to troubleshoot the issue. I even created a guest network in the Google home settings. But even the guest network apparently has band steering and will decide to push 5.0ghz at its discretion. 

If anyone else is experiencing this problem and/or has a solution -- please, I'm at a loss trying to figure out a work around and do not want to replace all my Ring devices.

To Google: I know y'all are trying to make life easy with band steering, but allow us to manually lock the 2.4ghz band to certain devices. And why would you allow band steering on the guest network as well when it should inherently be locked to 2.4ghz?

[David_K]

Lots of users have reported the same issue with Ring products, connected to Wi-Fi networks that use band steering, not just Nest Wifi.

Ring Doorbell keeps going offline : Ring
Ring Video Doorbell Pro - 5GHz Streaming Error - Products / Video Doorbells - Ring Community

Client devices themselves (i.e. your Ring product itself) decides which of your Wifi points and which band to connect to, and also when to switch between the bands. Like most Wifi systems, Google Wifi and Nest Wifi use industry standard mechanisms (known as 802.11k and 802.11v) to help devices make these decisions. However, not all devices support those specifications, or if they do, they arguably may not implement them particularly well.

From what I can gather, some Ring products simply don't operate as expected when they connect to a 5Ghz band, that is if the specific ring product supports 5Ghz.

It's been a myth for some time that the Nest Wifi guest network is 2.4 GHz only, it's not and never has been as far as I'm aware. Band steering is enabled on the guest network for the same reason it's enabled on the primary network, because it's designed to give clients a better experience, allowing the device to send and receive significantly larger volumes of data due to the greater number of available channels on the 5GHz band.

Hopefully the above explains why this isn't something that can be fixed on the Nest Wifi end. The most common workarounds for poorly performing devices you've probably read online are not available to you, as there's no feature or setting to separate the Wifi bands into different network names, to disable band steering, or to specify the band a specific device should connect to.

I'm curious if you have contacted Ring support about this? 

[Thaiphlosion]

Hello David,

Thank you for the quick reply. To answers your question, yes I've contacted both Google and Ring specifically about this issue and have talked to their advanced team about the problem for days now. Through various troubleshooting and cooperative research, we find that the band steering with the mesh network is most likely the culprit for the devices going offline. The devices themselves cannot change bands, whereas the nest pro's inherent ability to change bands is indeed changing bands as it deems "easier" for the user.

Initially when connecting/reconnecting the Ring devices, they are connected to the 2.4ghz band and work fine. The ring devices that are only 2.4ghz can't deviate from this band as it is the only band these specific ring devices operate on. However, when the mesh network band steers them to 5.0ghz is when they are kicked offline.

When I talk about the guest Wi-Fi network being 2.4ghz I'm referring to the industry standard of which guest networks are predominantly 2.4ghz by default i.e. my previous routers dual network with separate bands. I am only now aware that the guest Wi-Fi network for google Wi-Fi does not follow these standards. So I am suggesting that perhaps it should, so that users can lock devices to the 2.4ghz. As it stands, the options available for users to adjust network settings via Google Home is extremely limited in comparison to other routers I've owned. If I wanted to my guests to have a better time, I'd just give them the primary network with band steering (which is what I do normally anyway). So I do not understand the need for band steering on a guest network when there would be no difference from the primary network. 

[David_K]

Nest Wifi can't band steer a client that doesn't advertise itself as supporting 5 GHz. This makes me think there's either an issue with the Ring device firmware, config, or standard implementation, or there's a very complex compatibility issue at play here, such that Nest Wifi believes the device supports 5 GHz and is eligible to be band steered. 

I see what you're saying about guest Wi-Fi networks, but that's generally the case if the router supports different network names for the different bands. Nest Wifi doesn't, as is the case with most modern mesh networks (at least not by default) so the guest network gets advertised on all bands.

I agree there's definitely far less settings and customisation possible with Nest Wifi. It's very apparent it's designed to be a simple as possible for the masses.

[Thaiphlosion · Accepted solution]

My ring devices are not advertised as supporting 5ghz as I cannot connect them to a 5ghz network. Furthermore, I've tried pairing another device I own that is 2.4ghz only, and that too has issues with the google Wi-Fi mesh network. This further leads me to believe there is an issue with band steering, if not just with google, then with all mesh networks in general. Being as I do not have experience with other mesh networks, I will just have to take your word for it that these types of issues happen on these networks.

I don't quite understand what you mean by the Nest Wi-Fi not supporting different network names? I can create a new network with a different name. The only issue is that I cannot lock a band to that network like I'd like.

I also understand the appeal of making everything simple for the masses, but Google should have the option to unlock advance settings for users who need more access and know what they're doing. For example Google owns android, and in android phones there is a secret option for users to unlock developer mode, allowing us more granular control over our android devices.

Either way, it seems Google does not have a solution for me. I suppose the technology is not quite there yet to allow users to allocate specific bands as needed. Or Google does not see it being cost effective to implement the aforementioned functionality and is expecting future products to adopt multi-band compatibility.

For anyone reading this post with the same issue(s):

The only solution I've arrived at to secure a stable connection to the Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro with my 2.4ghz Ring Devices is by connecting a separate 3rd party traditional router(that has a 2.4ghz channel) via ethernet cable to a Nest Wi-Fi Pro pod. From here I connected my ring devices to the 3rd party router's 2.4ghz network and so far they have not been kicked offline.

Though it's a shame to require a middle-man product to remedy this problem, it may be the price you have to pay if you want the fast internet Google Fiber provides and, at the same time, have stable connectivity with 2.4ghz only devices.

Thank you for your time, David. Though Google did not provide a solution, I appreciate you reaching out to discuss this. I've learned a lot about mesh networks, how they work, and the direction Google is going with their products.