Google Home Wifi Speed

[JeffreyD]

A bit of a cry for help if you don't mind -

I've just moved into a new home, it's a tall house with solid walls.

I've had Virgin Media 500Mbps fibre broadband installed into the basement. I've then hardwired a google home wifi hub and have a wireless extender on each floor.

When I do a speed test on the google hub it shows full, 500mbps speed.
A mesh test shows "great" connection on the first 3 floors with "good" on the fourth"

Yet in real world use the internet speed is just "ok" - speedtests on phones and laptops show somewhere between 60 and 100 mbps. TV struggles to stream full HD.

Any suggestions as to what's causing such degradation?

Thanks in advance

[xeny]

I suppose start with the simplest scenario - do you at least get decent speed in the same room as the google home wifi hub ?

[sparkyhx]

firstly have you turned off the wifi on your router - it can cause issues/clash with the mesh

[Captain_Morgan]

I don’t believe those units have a dedicated band for the interconnect between nodes, so with each ‘hop’ between nodes you can lose 50% of your bandwidth.

You might want to test what happens when you switch off all nodes bar the master and test the speed again, switch them on one by one and test each time, you should see the speed drop each time.

As for why the tv is struggling, that’s strange as a 4K stream is only 20-25mb/s so should easily run over your wifi.

As for what to do about it, you could try returning it and buying a platform with three bands as one of those will be dedicated for the node interconnect

[h0b0]

sparkyhx said:

firstly have you turned off the wifi on your router - it can cause issues/clash with the mesh

Having had google wifi from when it was released I can say the above is the cause of 99% of complaints so hopefully it will be yours as well. Symptom of the double NAT that is created by having both the router and google distributing i.ps include
Slow wifi speeds
unstable wifi
unable to connect to devices on the "same" network
frustration

I have 5 of the little buggers in my house so have met other issues as well. As mine are old now I sometimes have to reset everything and start again. Keeping all the details the same means it does not take long and i do not have to go around all the devices in the house and update them.

I also have a couple hard wired as well.


The other thing though, I did not have an issue streaming 4K with 50mbs once I sorted the double NAT thing. Before, youtube was a nightmare as it was stuttering all the time on our TVs.

[JeffreyD]

Thanks for the replies.

My gut feel is that the answer is "google mesh wifi isn't actually very good"

I chose it as each node also has a speaker so you can listen to the radio/spotify and use google assistant, plus the google speakers are way cheaper than sonos as I was looking at lots of cash to get Sonos 1s where they needed to be.

However it doesn't really work as spotify only allows you to have one speaker or speaker group playing music at anyone time (even with a premium account) - you tube music allows this but that doesn't have the same selections as spotify.

So in essence it works but it's not that great - with the Virgin hub in modem mode sat in the same room as the Google router i am getting 170ish.

It's a first world problem and I don't really NEED 500mbs around the house but it's a bit annoying.
(I think the TV buffering is down to the android box I am using)

Thanks everyone.

[h0b0]

Can't comment on your generation because my army of wifi pucks is the older gen. I can confirm that once set up properly the wifi is rock solid. I have a PI hole as my DNS server that blocks ADs. My kids get annoyed when playing games away from home because of the number of ADs they get.

For home music I use the sono amps and ceiling speakers in the house and I sunk large speakers in the garden for outside.

[xeny]

h0b0 said:

Having had google wifi from when it was released I can say the above is the cause of 99% of complaints so hopefully it will be yours as well. Symptom of the double NAT that is created by having both the router and google distributing i.ps include
Slow wifi speeds
unstable wifi
unable to connect to devices on the "same" network
frustration

Just to say turning the wifi off on the superhub won't get rid of double NAT. To achieve that, you'd need to switch the superhub into modem mode. One downside of this is loss of use of three of the ethernet ports on the superhub.

[Blakeatron]

4 units of the older gen here, stone walls and 3 floors - no issues here and more than happy with speeds

[h0b0]

xeny said:

h0b0 said:

Having had google wifi from when it was released I can say the above is the cause of 99% of complaints so hopefully it will be yours as well. Symptom of the double NAT that is created by having both the router and google distributing i.ps include
Slow wifi speeds
unstable wifi
unable to connect to devices on the "same" network
frustration

Just to say turning the wifi off on the superhub won't get rid of double NAT. To achieve that, you'd need to switch the superhub into modem mode. One downside of this is loss of use of three of the ethernet ports on the superhub.

100% agree. Should have clarified.

[JeffreyD]

Blakeatron said:

4 units of the older gen here, stone walls and 3 floors - no issues here and more than happy with speeds

I suppose the speeds aren't really much of a problem in themselves - it's just that I have 500 at the modem but not throughout the house. The question is if I reduced to virgin 100 would I see degradation down to 20mbs?

I'll have a mess around at the weekend and see how fast WiFi is sat in the same room as the the virgin box using the native network.
It will probably end up being a job for a pro as the music setup is not good either.

[xeny]

JeffreyD said:

I suppose the speeds aren't really much of a problem in themselves - it's just that I have 500 at the modem but not throughout the house. The question is if I reduced to virgin 100 would I see degradation down to 20mbs?

I'll have a mess around at the weekend and see how fast WiFi is sat in the same room as the the virgin box using the native network.
It will probably end up being a job for a pro as the music setup is not good either.

With regard to the first point - the Google WiFi has a certain amount of throughput - if that's 100mbps, then you'll put 100 in and get 100 out.

Things that could help would be to if possible move the wired master unit up a floor, to reduce the total number of hops. Similarly, the better the transmission between the units, the better the overall performance, so for example if you've got a stairwell running the height of the house, then placing each floor's unit nearer that may well help.

[paulrockliffe]

Regardless of your issue, if you can run ethernet to the WiFi devices I would do that so that your back-haul is then taken out of the equation. I have 4 of the original devices, one out in the garden and have no problems at all with coverage or speeds etc and I've got about 30 devices all chattering away on the WiFi network.

It might be worth looking at your slow devices in the app and seeing which node they're connecting to. Not sure how all that works, but if Google isn't telling the devices to fk off the nodes until it connects to the best one, you could easily have devices on a node that is just too far away.

[AJB88]

I've got a similar set up, 3 storey house.

Moved in a few months ago, Vodafone 500 (now 200) connection, Vodafone router + Google Wifi on floor 1 and Google Wifi on floor 2. connection good around the house but kitchen wasn't as good.

Purchased a cheap single Google Wifi on ebay and now have good connection everywhere, I have changed the Vodafone router SSID to something different as I need it for our old printer that uses WPS to connection.

Going to get a 4th Google Wifi soon for the garage.