In my research, I had read that many times when you plugged in another router behind the one from my fiber provider, it wouldn’t work, or speeds would be very slow. Personally, I like tinkering under the hood quite a bit to understand how things work. And, unlike me, most people just want to plug things in and have them work. And people like configuring their home networks uniquely as well. The problem is, everyone’s needs are different. I won’t geek out too much on networking and Wifi. And after a few weeks, things still seem to be running smoothly. No contingency plans had to be implemented. I was ready to roll back to that configuration if all hell broke loose. To play it safe, my previous router was set up in bridge mode (as a WAP – Wireless Access Point). I even mapped out multiple lists of things to test in the setup, ways to roll back to my old configurations and previous router, and apologies I would have to say to my wife and kids after I broke the network when everyone relies on it all of the time. Geeky things like “double NAT” and “reduced throughput” were things that kept popping up as I did some research into if and how the Nest Wifi mesh could be integrated into my home network. The router provided by my fiber company (specifically the BGW210-700 gateway) was pretty locked down and know to cause issues when you plugged another router behind it. With these study- and work-at-home times due to COVID-19, I believe it is critical to have very fast upload and download speeds (see my article and video for why). I recently had fiber installed in my house, which I love, by the way. To set the scene here, I need to provide a tiny bit of background information. Did it work? Read on! (*Disclosure below.) Why? As I discovered as I set up and tested the Nest Wifi, they want to keep things simple. But Nest Wifi pretty much (with some exceptions) abstracts many of those settings away – hiding them from users. You see, I’m used to geeking out and tweaking configurations directly on the WiFi router. But, the thought of installing the new Google Nest Wifi mesh systems did scare me a bit. I would be comfortable saying that I’m “slightly experienced” but by no means “an expert” when it comes to WiFi. And I have mesh and WAPs around my home currently. I have experimented with Open Source builds like WW-DRT and Tomato. I have tested countless WiFi routers at home. Yes, this is a kludge – but the fault lies with the device manufacturer taking shortcuts in the setup process.I am no stranger to setting up WiFi. Once it has been set up, it should continue working just fine after your phone returns to the 5GHz band. One workaround for this is to do the initial setup of the device by first walking far enough away with your phone to get it to drop back from 5GHz to 2.4GHz and initiate the setup from there (you may need a helper to stay near the device being set up if it has buttons that have to be pushed). When the phone is close to the network, though, it will be on the faster 5GHz band, and can't tell the device which BSSID and channel to connect to for 2.4GHz operation. They assume the setup device (e.g., a phone) is on the same band as the device being set up. The problem is that some 2.4GHz-only devices were designed with poor assumptions about what modern home networks increasingly look like, and those can be more challenging to get set up first. However, most 2.4GHz equipment will work fine on this network (I have a bunch of 2.4GHz-only devices on my network, for example). Hello WiFi uses a single SSID for both bands (2.4GHz and 5GHz) across all access points.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |