Suggestions On Using Nest Routers for Church hall and class room area.

[jsomers18]

I am trying to assist my Church with wifi issues they have in their Parish hall and classroom area.  The hall is in on the lower level of out Church and build with concreate and cinder blocks the same way many old school buildings have been built.  When you go in the door there is a long hallway with 1 classroom to the right , 2 classrooms to the left before entering the large hall.  Currently they have a single old Netgear router hidden in the ceiling on a ceiling tile just inside the large hall to the left of the entry way, the service is 300Mbps.  The Connectivity is terrible and often causes issues when they have events.  I am looking at the Google Nest WIFI  as a solution to the issue. 

I've already seen where I could mount the primary base Router on a visible pole, in close proximity to where the existing router is, using the Nest outlet hangers. It would be exposed not hidden behind the Ceiling tile. I could likely do similar hangings of the 2  routers from a 3 pack to cover the entire hall.

I wanted to know if anyone had experience using the Googles Nest 2nd generation or current 3rd generation Wifi Routers in this environment and how well they worked?

Thank You 

Jim

[jsomers18]

Thank You so much for sharing,  My coverage needs are the hall and each classroom

Our layout looks like the below drawing,  The walls are cinder block. My thought was keep the nest base

in the same area as the current router just exposed and mounted from the outlet on the post. This would cover hall, and 2 classrooms. Then Place 1 extender just down the hall between the second doorways of the 2 class rooms and the other extender outside of the other classroom at the far end. 

My Concern is that the cinder block wall may need me to have and additional extender in classroom 5 

[MichaelP]

Hello @jsomers18 

If you follow @olavrb advice and run Ethernet between the secondaries and the primary, you can use a layout like this. But, if you attempt to rely on the mesh interconnect alone, this layout is going to be fairly problematic. To use the mesh interconnect instead of Ethernet, you'll want to have the primary unit as close to the center of the coverage area as possible with secondary/point units placed close enough to get strong mesh connections for themselves. From there, they can provide coverage to more distant clients. But, the fact that the walls are cinder block / concrete makes me agree with Olav – you want to use Ethernet to connect the secondaries back to the primary. That will allow you to place those secondaries further away, improving coverage (hopefully going through doors instead of trying to get through those solid walls.

[olavrb]

The first reply to this thread was from some generative AI bot, so I marked it as spam.

For something like this I'd look into Nest Wifi Pro rather than Nest Wifi router, as Wi-Fi 6 is better when many client devices are involved. Search for a read about OFDMA to learn more.

If possible you should also look into the ability to pull an ethernet cable between all Nest Wifi Pro units, rather than using wireless mesh/backhaul, as it will provide better speed and reliability. This is known as wired backhaul. More info on that:

• https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/6274262?hl=en
• https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7215624?hl=en

If you're not gonna wire any other devices you might daisy chain like so:

Else add an unmanaged switch to the mix like so:

[jsomers18]

Thank You very much