same channel

[vayvanne]

Hello.

Decided to share inefficient behaviour of nest wifi regarding channel selection - it sticks to channel 36 (here in the UK) even when configured as a standalone AP in bridge mode. This slows down wifi speeds to quarter when one wifi node connects to another in the same network even when a traffic is passing over a wire. I read over here that this is not a bug, but a feature.

I understand that nest wifi was designed as a mesh product primarily but these days even 5GHz band is heavily busy, it easily can be two nest wifi networks running nearby so please support my feature request to google to redesign this to more adequate functionality even regular wifi products does provide.

Or if there is a way to segregate bands of two wifi signals please share. My setup is simple - nest wifi in bridge mode is wired into nest wifi pro bashing as a primary router. Home app did not allow me to set this up directly, so I had to create a second, separate home for this.

Many thanks.

PS. by the way, seems that google still not enabled UPnP IGD2 support in nest wifi pro. Did someone managed to get this working?

[olavrb]

On Nest Wifi 5ghz channel selection is hardcoded, can't be changed. Channel width, channel and transmit power might vary per region a Nest Wifi unit is made for to fit Wi-Fi regulations.

If you want greater control, buy something else than Nest Wifi.

[vayvanne]

thanks for you reply, olavrb. in my case nest wifi is wired into nest wifi pro as a standalone AP in bridge mode and as on separate home/address in Home app. and it has a separate ssid. I did this with the intention to segregate traffic to it and primary nest wifi pro to improve wifi speed and to solve wpa3 compatibility issues with some of my wifi devices, like hp printer not connecting to wpa3 network at all. I was surprised to see that standalone nest wifi is choosing the same 5ghz wifi channel as primary nest wifi pro unit. which, as I can understand, halves and sometimes quarters speed between two wifi devices. iperf measures gives me max 60-65 mbps between two wifi devices, and muchs faster speeds limited by ISP tariff - from internet.

I would be grateful for a suggestions on how to improve wifi performance for my LAN traffic using nest wifi pro, nest wifi and google wifi (I can use all three of them) wired.

[olavrb]

How to get the best wireless network speed has been discussed many times here and on Reddit ( https://reddit.com/r/googlewifi, https://reddit.com/r/nestwifi), so I won't go in depth. Some key points:

• Fewer Nest Wifi units / wireless transmitters in the environment the better: More units introduces more overhead and wireless disturbance, interference.
  • Placement: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7183150?hl=en 
  • How many should you have: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7182840?hl=en 
• It can help to disable all "preferred activities": https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9541371?hl=en
• It can help to factory reset the whole network ( https://support.google.com/googlenest/troubleshooter/13816290?hl=en ) and set up everything from scratch ( https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9548301?hl=en ).
• Make sure other wireless transmitters aren't placed close to Nest Wifi. Like wireless suround systems, Bluetooth devices.
• Wire as many client devices as possible.
• Disable MAC randomization and automatic proxy settings on apple client devices.

If neighbour networks use the same Wi-Fi channels as Nest Wifi, maybe a different home Wi-Fi solution with greater control of channel selection, channel width, transmit power etc. would be better. Like Synology, Ubiquiti UniFi.

[vayvanne]

but why it is hardcoded? if a customer does not add a second router to the same location/room and does not join it as a node to the existing mesh network - it will be interfering with everything on the same channel. is this behaviour even compliant to the standard?

[olavrb]

Here's more info from earlier threads:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleWiFi/comments/dutfng/channel_selection/f789hqm
• https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleWiFi/comments/vbbp80/5ghz_channel_selection/ic7cc2g

[vayvanne]

Purchased fast triband router of other vendor, wired it into nest wifi, created separate ssid on the separate wifi channel and... LAN traffic is slow - barely reaching above 4MB/s. While internet traffic is FAST. Does google profile traffic on even on ethernet LAN port?!

[olavrb]

Yes, Nest Wifi has QoS / traffic shaping using fq_codel behind the scenes. Also for wired ethernet.

Edit: I've experienced that LAN traffic going through a Nest Wifi unit can be slow as well. It's better to use a unmanaged switch between the LAN devices in my experience.

[vayvanne]

Thanks for reply, olavrb. all my client devices are wifi, and what I was trying to accomplish is improve on speed which is below than expected. I appreciate that the bottleneck may be not nest routers but the client devices, that the connection speeds shown on them are far from a practical one. But I can not accept that the LAN traffic is slowed down due to architechtural compromises and simplicity. All my client devices are reaching 150 mbps offered for my by ISP. I would be happy if my LAN traffic does go 150 mbps as well. Best what I managed to achieve during my experiments today was 80 mbps at peak. I replaced nest wifi pro 6e device which was primary router with alternative fast tri-band device, hoping that the traffic on internet port of nest is not shaped and will be at least 100 mbps. I switched nest wifi pro into bridge mode, wired it to the main router and nothing has changed. The wifi SSIDs and channels are segregated now, and radio can not be a bottleneck as I was suspecting initially. It can not be client devices - the internet speeds are decent on them. The only cause left is that nest wifi are shaping LAN traffic. I even tried iperf over the LAN with public IPv6 addresses my ISP provides - no difference. LAN is slow.

[vayvanne]

My SSIDs are 7KEN6E (nest wifi pro) and BTHub4-HW69 (despite the name this is not BT). Everyone loves channel 36 😏 Google - we need a channel auto/ selection.

Thisth

[vayvanne]

I excluded nest wifi pro from my speed'o'meter home lab setup, replacing it with my ISP's router made in China. It choose most available 5GHz channel 100 (while the primary device is on channel 48, and... everything LAN is dead slow again. Then I wired my laptop to both of them and I get expected hundreds of megabits sending and receiving to all other wireless clients. That is, if both legs are wireless - it slows down. If one leg is wireless and the other is wired - it is fast. Why is this so? My client devices are windows 10 PCs, is it something to do with OS? I can't blame interference now because it is not a mesh network and the routers are on different channels.