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Weak mesh connection on 2nd floor (attic)

KevinH84
Community Member

Hi everyone,

Recently I purchased the Nest wifi starterkit with 1x the router and 1x wifi point. The setup is:

- Router on cable with the modem in the living room (1st floor)

- Wifi point on the 2nd floor, receiving good wifi from the router in the livingroom

Now I purchased a 2nd wifi point to install on the topp floor (attic) = 3rd floor) and it is giving me a weak mesh connection. The Google Home app is siggesting me to move it closer to the modem, but that is not a possibility. 

My question is: Am I mistaken to think thet the wifi point on the top floor should receive wifi from the wifi point on the floor below it? (that's the purpose of mesh, right?)

Or do the wifi point together do not form a mesh network (so the router on 1st floor gives wifi to wifipoint on 2nd floor and that one does not pass it through to the one on the 3rd floor?

Your tips would be greatly be appreciated 🙂

Regards,

Kevin

10 REPLIES 10

MichaelP
Diamond Product Expert
Diamond Product Expert

Hello @KevinH84 

They do form a mesh, but the key question is what path traffic takes through that mesh. The answer is that it will take the path with the fewest hops, since every extra hop requires retransmitting the data back out on the same channel. So, if your attic point can talk directly to the primary, it will do that instead of going through the second floor point. This is why the optimal placement advice is to have the primary as close to the center of the home as possible with secondaries one or two rooms away from there – close enough to get a strong 5GHz connection for themselves. From there they will provide 2.4 and 5GHz coverage to more distant clients. 

In your case, if you can't get the primary on the second floor, I would at least get it closer to the center of the first floor and then place the two secondaries on the second floor, spread apart by a few rooms. This triangular layout should provide coverage to clients on all three floors (hopefully). You may need to experiment a bit and use the mesh test to see the results of each change.

Hi @MichaelP ,

Thank you for the explanation, very insightfull for me. I understand what you are saying, mut my house is vertically rather long instead of wide in sq foot.

Some additional questions I have:

- Is it possible to force a wifi point to use mesh  to skip the router? (It’s one of the main features for my son to have a google speaker in his room)

- what would happen if I leave the setup? Will it complete and start using mesh on it’s own? (Shifting the router is not really an option)

kind regards,

Kevin

MichaelP
Diamond Product Expert
Diamond Product Expert

It is not possible to change the mesh path selection algorithm. It's unlikely to behave differently if you just leave it as is. I would really try to change the placement or live with the weak 2nd floor secondary. 

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi, KevinH84.

It looks like MichaelP was able to give you a lot of good info here. I just wanted to jump in real fast to see if you had any additional needs or questions or if you were all sorted out for you. If you need more help, let us know.

Thanks.

KevinH84
Community Member

Hi Jeff,

thanks for the question. I have to admit I am a bit disappointed in the product, as in my house it is not fully mesh capable.

I would suggest if a wifi point has weak connection to make it hop through anoter point then the router. 

I guess i’ll have to learn and live with a sub optimal connection.

thanks for your care.

regards,

Kevin

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

I'm sorry to hear that you're disappointed, KevinH84. Unfortunately, the way the mesh works there's no way to leapfrog things as you've mentioned. It does seem like a use case that others might have as well, even if it's not super common. I can pass the suggestion along to our internal teams as a feature request.

Thanks.

KevinH84
Community Member

Good morning Jeff,

Thanks for your reply. I think it would be very usefull to pass this on as a feature request. 

I can not really believe that this is very uncommon. As I look at the description in the Google product, it seems to me this is very much oriented on American 1 or 2 story housing with a wider sq. footage. As I live in the Netherlands, we tend to build in height and not so much in width, wich goes for more countries in Europe 😉

But it would be a good feature request for me, to make it more "full meshy".

Kind regards,

Kevin

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

I agree, Kevin. I'll make sure the word is passed along. Thanks for sharing your setup needs.

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi, everyone.
Just one quick final check in here since activity has slowed down. We'll be locking the thread in the next 24 hours, but if you still need help, I would be happy to keep it open. If there's more we can do, just let me know.
Thanks.

Jeff
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi, everyone.
As we haven't had any activity here recently I'm going to go ahead and close the thread. If you have more to add, feel free to start a new discussion.
Thanks