Wiring a Third Wifi point into a switch connected to a Mesh Secondary Wifi point

[1mattmc]

Hey everyone, I'm hoping somebody will be able to help me with this issue.

The setup I'm trying to create with my Google Wifi is as follows:

(✓) Modem → Primary Wifi point → Mesh (Secondary) Wifi point -> Switch (wired from LAN port on Secondary Wifi point) -> Third Wifi point (wired into LAN port)

I have tested the ethernet cable used for the Third Wifi Point and the connection is good, but despite resetting the network point and the entire network multiple times, the Third Wifi point won't pick up the wired connection and will try to connect to the mesh wifi (which is very weak and so the speed is terrible).

Is this setup supposed to work? The support docs seem to suggest it would but it's not clear whether everything needs to be wired together (and there can't be a break where wifi is used).

[olavrb]

I'm pretty sure that won't work. @MichaelP might have a more detailed answer on this.

The best would be to run ethernet all the way back to the primary puck. Be it ethernet, ethernet over coax (MoCA) or even powerline.

[1mattmc]

Thank you for your reply!

The good/weird news is that having given up last night, the third wifi point is now showing as wired with a great connection! Will test the speed out properly shortly but looks like it might have worked after all!

[olavrb]

Wow, really. 🙂

Keep us posted.

[1mattmc]

So it was working this morning and speeds were great, until the point when I tried to add a local ethernet connection to the third wifi point. This somehow made it go back to mesh mode, and now it's very slow again and I can't get it to go back into wired mode! I wish this was a configuration option.

Maybe the thing that made it switch to wired mode yesterday was a brief wifi disconnect from the second wifi point, but I can't seem to get that to happen again today even when closing all of the doors. 😔

It's going to be a painful job getting a wired connection from the primary wifi point to the secondary one, but maybe this is the only proper solution?

[MichaelP · Accepted solution]

Hello @olavrb and @1mattmc 

Since the 802.11s mesh protocol doesn't run over Ethernet, any Ethernet links in the system create alternate paths for traffic to take. This creates loops, that would cause big problems if they weren't dealt with. So, they use the old 802.1d Spanning Tree Protocol to detect these loops and disable traffic through low priority (mesh) paths in favor of high priority (Ethernet) paths. This means wired secondaries can't carry traffic for more distant mesh-only secondaries. This makes hybrid configurations where some secondaries are wired and others aren't more complex to design, but it's not impossible.

However – a hybrid configuration as described here is even more complex, and may behave in a random and unpredictable way as the spanning tree protocol tries to enable and disable just the right links while the mesh protocol continues running between everything (even though it can't be bridged in on some nodes). It might work one day and stop working the next. That's why it is not a supported configuration. It sounds like that's the behavior you are seeing right now in your system. I agree with Olav – you'll want to have an Ethernet network rooted in the primary node's LAN port that all wired secondaries connect into. Then, any mesh-only secondaries should be placed close enough to the primary to get a strong one-hop connection directly to it. Placing the primary as close to the center of the group of mesh secondaries will make this easier.

[1mattmc]

This is so helpful, thank you!

Just tested it with a wired connection to the primary and it works perfectly, so lesson learned that you can’t wire up to a wireless secondary or the behaviour will indeed be very strange!

Thank you both for your help.

[EdwardT]

Hi folks,

@MichaelP and olavrb, we always appreciate the help!

@1mattmc, I'm glad to hear that it's working fine now. Please observe it for now and let us know if anything comes up.

Thanks,

Edward

[Jeff]

Hi all,

As we got our resolution here, I'm going to mark this one as resolved in the next 24 hours. Thanks to all who helped and contributed. If anyone has any other needs, please feel free to let me know before the lock.

Thanks,
Jeff