Google Wifi Questions

[Authority]

I have an RT-AC68 that's unable to cover the home. In fact, it literally can't get a good signal one room over so I am assuming there has to be chicken wire in the walls or something? Anyway... I am thinking of going Google Wifi and have some questions.

In my setup I would have a Google Wifi in four adjacent rooms. Three would be wired and one wireless.

1). If a wireless node can pick up a signal from two different wired nodes is it smart enough to deal with that?

2). Do I need a network name for 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz networks and if not how is that handled?

3). Is each Google Wifi fully functional on its own or is there a "master"? If I understand it, a 3-pack or 4-pack could actually be used at four different locations?

 

[kfmfe04]

1. I don't know.

2. Same SSID - I don't know the details of how the handshake goes but your devices will only see one SSID.

3. No. The hardware in each puck is identical. However, during the setup, the puck that is connected to the modem is designated as the master. The slaves may talk to the master via WiFi (default and uses more bandwidth) or a wired backhaul.

 

[kfmfe04]

Some additional comments if you decide to go through with Google WiFi.

I was previously running an ASUS RT-N66U for 6-7 years on Merlin's firmware. After moving, I got AT&T Gigabit Fiber (wired 880/634 Mbps down/up) so I thought it was time to try out AC on some of these new mesh networks.

So last June, I bought a 3 pack of Google WiFi. In the first month, the WiFi was flaky with Apple's iOS devices. I contacted Google, but they were not much help. For months I thought it was Apple's side. There were reports of other users having similar problems on the web.

About a week ago, my wired speeds dropped to 50 Mbps down. WiFi was also capped around those speeds. 24/7 phone support from Google is convenient, but their guesses of what went wrong were all over the place, including pointing a finger at AT&T's modem, which is unlikely because if I directly wire a PC to their modem, I had no loss of speed. Of course, they had me factory reset the 3 pucks, which didn't help.

As a sanity check, I got my old RT-N66U out of the closet and found 800 Mbps speeds. I had it with Google. Tomorrow, I was planning to go down to Best Buy and buy a Asus RT-AC1900P - Google WiFi can go into the garbage can.

For a last ditch attempt, I removed the master puck and used one of the two slave pucks as master. I did a factory reset of those two units. On the first trial, I got 867/657 wired. An added bonus: all iOS devices are making solid connections to Google WiFi now.

So if you do go for Google WiFi, don't tolerate any weirdness. You can try swapping pucks, a convenient consequence of having identical pucks.

Good luck.

 

[albireo13]

So, what kind of Wifi speeds can Google Wifi support??