Nest wifi randomly going offline

[Sydtriman]

For the past week my Google nest Wi-Fi go randomly off-line. There have been absolutely no other changes in my network or environment that could cause this. I’ve had no issues prior to this. 

I can see a couple of posts in the forum of a similar vein, has anybody been able to solve this issue? Is it a firmware problem?

I’ve done a full factory reset which hasn’t helped, and in fact seems to have made it worse. 

Setup: Router (firmware 13729.57.27) and 2 points (firmware 1.54.267572)

any ideas?

[MeshDC]

@KibokoGoogle told me I would be updated to the latest firmware this month, around the 25th.  They told me the latest firmware to be applied is:

Nest Wifi router: 14150.43.80

Nest Wifi point: 1.54.294928

[Kitokatlin]

I'm already at that firmware version

[alcas]

@Jeff  I’m on latest firmware and it’s still not fixed. Just thought I needed to call that out because apparently you think this defect has magically fizzled out

[goodisonsouthy]

I have a 3 Google WiFi setup with an additional 2 nest wifi added. One of the nest wifi is setup as the main point and I've been having issues offline issues that appear to be affecting the Google WiFi points exclusively. As I'm typing this all three Google WiFi points are down. A full network reboot did nothing to bring them back online. I've been having this issue for at least a couple of months. None of the Google WiFi points have anything externally plugged in to them.  

[Kiboko]

FYI

M89 Release notes
14150.43.80 (Nest Wifi router and Google Wifi), 1.54.294928 (Nest Wifi point)

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/11993118?hl=en-CA

[LukeTS]

Hi everyone, it's a shame that so many people still experience issues, but I wanted to give an update on my situation and how it seems to be much improved now.

I've posted a few weeks ago about issues with my mesh connection. It got so bad that I couldn't even re-create my mesh even after a complete factory reset of the whole network. As a reminder, I am using 2 Nest Wifi routers, with one acting as a proper router while the other one is used as a point connected by Wifi.

I received the M94 update recently and was hopeful that it would just solve my issues, but that wasn't the case. Even after both routers were updated I still couldn't get the mesh up and running at all. I was wondering if I actually had a defective unit. 

I ended up trying lots of things, and in a final attempt at solving the situation I swapped the routers to see what happened. To my surprise and relieve this actually seems to have solved my situation. The initial mesh test, when adding the second router to the network, still failed for some reason, but after a short while it cam fully online and hasn't disconnected since.

The only difference to my old network is that I haven't enabled WPA3 yet, so I'm gonna write and update once I've tried that.

So far so good...

[Sergentmoo]

Same issue here, so annoying. Internet connection no problem, but wifi dies for like 5mins like it's rebooting. I have the nest wifi and Google wifi points off of that one. 

[Klminor52]

Months later and my issues have not gone away or reduced in frequency.  My experience has stopped several family members from going mesh with these products.

[Robert1480]

It's not a mesh issue, it's a Google issue. I love my Netgear Orbi - coming up on 4 straight months with high performance and still zero disconnections!

[TellMeAnother]

Someone needs to make Google aware how unhappy their customers are, and how they are damaging their brand.

[Gunrack]

Same with my system. Seemed to start in late November or early December. 

[BogdanD]

Same issue here, going on for months. Restarting the router help for a while. 

[guilhermesalema]

New firmware here, but still disconnecting several times daily and slow speeds after some days. Google is terrible, support is poor, honest is something that they don't know, jeff is a parrot saying always the same thing. Bizzare!!!!

[Izmetg]

Finally thank god I saw this article from 9to5. I’ve had my Google WiFi mesh for a few years and it’s been the past few months it goes offline and I thought it must be my ISP. It kind of sucks I’ve had to pull my hair out trying to figure out that it’s been the mesh system. Why? Google needs to own this, I don’t want to be forced to upgrade to 6e with Amazon error or Toilet Paper (TP). I want my working consistent google like it was before. Must be their new software upgrades screwing with it. Please fix this google!!

[zephyr4813]

My Google Nest wifi has been going out about once a day. When I try to restart I get a slow blinking yellow light and no internet.

I confirmed with my ISP that their connection to my modem has been fine. Hope this gets fixed as my tenants are suffering as well.

[dresdner353]

Has anyone run network capture/wireshark on their computers when this issue is occurring?

I get an issue where the network "seems" offline with attempts to connect to sites fail instantly. It then recovers, seeming fine again and the whole thing reoccurs later on.

I took network trace (Wireshark on my Mac) and my network clients are receiving ICMP packets back from Nest Wifi with type 3/13 (unreachable/administratively disabled). It's not offline, more the router is refusing to let me connect to sites.

I can force this issue on my mac with a simple shell loop like this on a terminal... 

while true; do curl -L google.com; done

..this will continually get the google homepage, dumping HTML and JS on the console until it triggers this ICMP response 20-30 seconds later, causing curl to output errors like this... 

curl: (7) Failed to connect to google.com port 80 after 100 ms: Connection refused
curl: (7) Failed to connect to google.com port 80 after 103 ms: Connection refused
curl: (7) Failed to connect to google.com port 80 after 86 ms: Connection refused
curl: (7) Failed to connect to google.com port 80 after 93 ms: Connection refused
curl: (7) Failed to connect to google.com port 80 after 102 ms: Connection refused

and these connection failures map directly to ICMP 3/13 packets in the network capture.

The above may be something for people to try to see if they too are getting the same ICMP scenarios.

My setup has the Nest wifi LAN connected to a cable router (double-NAT). But if I wire my computers/devices directly to the cable router or use it's native WiFi, this issue is never present. It only occurs when connected via cable or WiFi to Nest WiFi. 

To me it feels like the router is trying to protect bandwidth and is just triggering way too early. I have disabled the video conference and gaming priority options but the problems occur regardless. 

[HL-brokenrobot]

Google support told me double-NAT is the problem but when I configured my cable modem to Bridge mode I lost internet completely and also lost ability to connect to the cable modem to undo the change. I had to get Comcast to undo the "fix" for me.

[dresdner353]

You would possibly need to specify the username and password in bridge mode. The terminology is a bit all over the place in the industry but generally speaking, when you bypass local router NAT, you end up getting the router into one of two modes:

• Modem Mode
  Usually this still acts as a DHCP server and when your single LAN client connects to it, it gets the actual public IP from the router and not a LAN IP (10.x). Usually you do nothing to Nest config (and most other BYO Wifi Routers)... they continue to request a DHCP IP from the router and now get the public IP instead of the private IP
  
  
• Bridge Mode
  This is a PPPoE authenticated connection based on credentials provided to you by the broadband provider. They are sometimes account-specific but often enough, tend to be generic as the broadband providers use a line identifier and know who you are. Either way, this also gets the true public IP from the router. But Nest Wifi needs to be reconfigured into this mode in its own settings. See the link below..

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/6246630?hl=en#zippy=%2Cpppoe

[HL-brokenrobot]

That's helpful, thanks. That said, neither google support or comcast support have brought that up, which emphasizes that if this is what it takes to get these devices to work they may not be appropriate for regular consumers, or they need more sophisticated setup software to handle it automatically, or at the very least better step-by-step instructions.

[Tosan]

This is a great idea. But no thank you. It will fail. The Google nest doesn't do well with Bridge mode on SPECTRUM/CHARTER, COX, XFINITY. To be able to accept it it may take between 2 hrs of trial and error with turning on and off the modem and reseting the points and router constantly. I loved the hype tho, but we have been doing this for a while trying and waiting with support for a fix. This doesn't have ANYTHING TO DO with the nestWifi. You can talk to the ISP and the Manufacturer and it won't fix the nest equipment. Thank you for sharing however, why the need to restart the equipment constantly? What does this have anything to do with bridge mode..... if you lost track of the POSTS, our system and set up was working PERFECTLY prior to the equipment upgrade. I'm really not expecting or really want a reply for this comment, but for others that are NEW AND JUST TUNNING IN, READ BEFORE YOU POST. The problem is not the modem, the configuration, the bridge mode, which worked on Google Wifi previously.  It's EITHER the firmware or the EQUIPMENT, AND if it's the equipment, I'm expecting GOOGLE to provide some solution on replacing the equipment through them and we can send it the trash we purchased for over 300$. At no cost to us.

[dresdner353]

I have not lost track of anything. You should have read my earliest post on this.. way back in April.

I was getting pretty dramatic failures on outbound traffic that could be forced if I ran a stress test continuously connecting to the same site.  Trace identified it was an ICMP administrative issue refusing to route outbound traffic.

That same issue was not occurring if I connected directly via the BB router. 

But the scenarios I got would cause the mesh to get all upset. I raised a direct ticket on this and Google advised that the double-NAT is a common issue. When I removed it from the equation, all my issues went away and I am no longer getting frequent issues with the mesh.

That does not give Google a free pass on what might be a shoddy NAT implementation but it may solve the issues for others. 

[jmagsho]

I have been experiencing this off and on for months.   I wish they would fix it already.

[Chadkafka]

This has just started happening in our home setup. I purposely switched to Google Home Wifi recently (from Netgear because of our other infrastructure (cameras, displays, etc). This morning I was trying to use the Google Home app to check network settings and speed tests weren't completing. I also reset all points and router via the app but I don't think those commands were taking. I finally unplugged main router and then plugged back in and for the moment that has resolved our issues. We came from experiencing this with Netgear...I really hope there is a fix coming for this.   

[AbuBabbu]

So I'm not the only one?? I have the 2nd gen mesh and both wifi points (one is in my office which is super annoying) just stop working 1-2x daily. Only fix I've found is the old tried and true unplug it for 30 seconds to reboot.

[Spissatus]

Have also had this issue the past few months. Usually the middle of three nodes identifies it has gone offline.

[ADover]

I have had this same issue over the last few months. Just happened again last night. Internet was fine but all my devices locked up for about 3 minutes. Then poof back online again...

[Jobeesh]

I am experiencing this issue as well. Nest hotspot in my kitchen appears to be the root cause. When I reboot it the network comes back up. 

[JBealor]

Finally saw an article from 9to5Google and now I know I’m not alone in my frustration! For months one access point reports weak connection (even when 15 ft from hub in line of sight!) and my connection to internet from anywhere in my house would lag or drop! I too thought it was my ISP, even replaced their wired router. I also had to reenable my Apple wifi router as a secondary access point for all of my streaming TVs to use instead of my Google  mesh because of the throughput issues. 

Anyone from Google focused on this issues?

[Robert1480]

Welcome to the club 😂

Google is on this! If you scroll through the messages, you'll see messages from Google saying, "Google is aware of the issue and is addressing it." Should be pretty easy to find some of those given that they said it last September. And October. And November. And December. And January. And February. And March. And a few weeks ago. So yeah, rest assured, a fix is imminent.

Seriously though, we were just told that a firmware fix was out. I abandoned Google after documenting almost 100 disconnections in a 7 day period and losing 4 client Zoom calls in the same day last December.

To see if the firmware update solved the problem, I pulled my Google stuff out of the basement a few days ago, plugged it in, and waited for the firmware to update, which it did. 

Within an hour, had my first disconnection (of many) before reboxing it and hauling it back to the basement. If you need consistent, stable connections for work, you need to buy something else. I went with Netgear and have had zero disconnections since December. Others are using Asus I know, not sure what else. Just get something, anything, from another vendor unless you can live with random outages throughout the day.

[Longneck]

Hoooey…Google doesn’t see a few hundred pi$$ed off people as a threat. It won’t be fixed “ever”  wake the f up! 
JEFF IS A BOT, long live Jeff! He got fired. This thread was merged from a different thread. This crap is over a year old!

[Robert1480]

Did you actually read what I wrote? Does this help you :  /s 

I literally said that none of their fixes are fixes.

I know Google isn't going to do anything. They haven't for almost 7 months. I don't even use the stuff anymore.

[ADover]

That article brought me here also. I didn't know so many were experiencing the same thing. I have the original Google wifi version and thought my main Google router was having issues so I purchased a new Nest Router and still having the same issue.

[aykthenike]

I keep unplugging and replugging my wifi point every other day. It works for a bit but it's super annoying.

[sbg]

I've been having the same issue for months and thought I was going crazy until I came across this thread. This is exactly what's going on, and September seems about the right time frame for when it started. I even bought entirely new Google Nest wifis thinking it might bea problem with my hardware. Nope. 

[Nicholas-au]

I have Nest Audio here randomly disconnects and requires a full hardware restart to get it working again.

[daarrn]

Welp, it's been fun, but the repeated issues right until they were turned off for the last time forced me to finally replace the google wifi paperweights that were posing as mesh devices. Good luck those of you still holding out hope. Maybe good ol google bot @Jeff really will pull off a fix... 😂

[Robert1480]

That is awesome - I was actually going to try giving Jeff the Turing test to check...

Btw, loving my Netgear replacement - zero outages in four months! Hooked up the Google devices a few days ago to let them download the OTA upgrade to test the new firmware today - documented multiple outages in a matter of a few hours. Buh bye again, Google.

[Holamak]

I saw an article on 9to5 a few months that ago, and here's another. 

https://chromeunboxed.com/google-nest-wifi-offline-issues-ongoing 

Also, I've disconnected all my mesh points and now only have the router/main point running. I haven't had any dropout issues anymore, but my house does have a crap signal and dark spots.

[AABBsolutely]

I have the same issue with my Google/Nest routers. I've even updated my isp internet speeds to a gig... 

[alcas]

Every single person I know is experiencing this problem but a lot of them assumed it was their ISP. And they’ve been fighting them for months now. Finally they saw this thread and now they understand