Apologies in advance for the long post, there's a lot of information I need to lay out in order to understand the issue that I'm experiencing. Thank you for those who are willing to read the entirety of this post.
I'm having a problem with my Mesh Network that I've been dealing with for over a year now that I believe I know what the problem is and how to solve it but I wanted to post here to see if others have any other insight from their own perspective.
At a high level, I have a Google Wifi Mesh network among 5 Google Wifi pucks that are all connected through an ethernet backhaul. We have 3 acres of land where I have Nest Cameras set up all throughout the property. In order to support that, I needed to spread my wireless landscape as much as I can and setting up 5 pucks accomplishes this. Below is a link to the diagram of that network
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xr-zlM8J7Ngg_en3nMJ9HhkeMHInznum/view
The problem that I'm having is that my Nest cameras are randomly going offline for a short period of time with random WIFI pucks showing offline. It's never the same set of WIFI pucks but it's usually either #3, #4 or #5. Sometimes it's once a month, once a week or a few times a week. I've reset my cameras and my network dozens of times to see if that would clear it up. I've tested the ethernet connections that I've built out myself and they've all tested just fine with no packet losses. Just for some assurance, I've even redone all the end connections on the ethernet and retested with no packet losses. Nothing improved.
I've contacted Google WIFI support twice on this matter over the past year. This is what they responded with...
First Contact:
They ask me why I was using an Ethernet backhaul and I explained to them that I trusted a hard-wired mesh network over a wireless network for performance reasons and that also because #3 was too far from #2 and #4 is too far from #3 for a wireless backhaul to work. They informed me that the issue I was experiencing was due to a bad internet connection to the modem in which the Google WIFI pucks will drop their ethernet backhaul over to a wireless backhaul and because #3 was too far from #2 and #4 is too far from #3, those pucks are going offline as a result. I didn't quite understand why the pucks would do that but whatever, I ended up calling my ISP to fix my internet connection. They informed me that the modem (which is mine) was the issue and that it kept timing out. That on-sight visit was 5 minutes long and cost me $80 but that's another story for another time.... So I ended up buying a high-end Netgear modem for $100 and yet...the problem still persisted
Second Contact:
They're now stating that the "real" issue is that the ethernet connections between #2 and #3 & #3 and #4 are too long and are losing a continuous connection. I informed them that cannot be true because they're less than the rated max distance of 100 meters (328 feet) for ethernet wiring but they said it actually has to be less than 100 feet, not meters. I disagreed with them and just chalked it up to them not reading meters vs feet correctly. However they also informed that when I configure the network (even adding additional pucks later on), I need to do so wirelessly first prior to wiring them up on a switch. For #4 and #5, I had them wired to their switches while I added them to my existing network. So I rebuilt the network and did exactly what they suggested and for nearly 3 months, NO ISSUES!!!!!!
But then recently it has all come back to the same state of weekly dropped pucks/nest camera connections. So I'm now convinced that even though #2 and #3 & #3 and #4 are connected by less than 328 feet of ethernet, that must be the problem and I'm randomly losing packets somehow. So the solution that I'm going to come up with now is using MOCA adapters between those devices, wired with RG6 Coax wiring which has longer distance runs than ethernet. The adapters I plan on using are these
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078HMDDV...olid=3C7VZVQ2PO7V4&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
Before I go ahead and do that. I'd like to hear from other enthusiast/experts on here to get their thoughts. Mostly because I'm limited to my knowledge with advanced networking but more particularly because I don't trust my ISP or the Google WIFI Support with what they thought were the problems.
I'm having a problem with my Mesh Network that I've been dealing with for over a year now that I believe I know what the problem is and how to solve it but I wanted to post here to see if others have any other insight from their own perspective.
At a high level, I have a Google Wifi Mesh network among 5 Google Wifi pucks that are all connected through an ethernet backhaul. We have 3 acres of land where I have Nest Cameras set up all throughout the property. In order to support that, I needed to spread my wireless landscape as much as I can and setting up 5 pucks accomplishes this. Below is a link to the diagram of that network
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xr-zlM8J7Ngg_en3nMJ9HhkeMHInznum/view
The problem that I'm having is that my Nest cameras are randomly going offline for a short period of time with random WIFI pucks showing offline. It's never the same set of WIFI pucks but it's usually either #3, #4 or #5. Sometimes it's once a month, once a week or a few times a week. I've reset my cameras and my network dozens of times to see if that would clear it up. I've tested the ethernet connections that I've built out myself and they've all tested just fine with no packet losses. Just for some assurance, I've even redone all the end connections on the ethernet and retested with no packet losses. Nothing improved.
I've contacted Google WIFI support twice on this matter over the past year. This is what they responded with...
First Contact:
They ask me why I was using an Ethernet backhaul and I explained to them that I trusted a hard-wired mesh network over a wireless network for performance reasons and that also because #3 was too far from #2 and #4 is too far from #3 for a wireless backhaul to work. They informed me that the issue I was experiencing was due to a bad internet connection to the modem in which the Google WIFI pucks will drop their ethernet backhaul over to a wireless backhaul and because #3 was too far from #2 and #4 is too far from #3, those pucks are going offline as a result. I didn't quite understand why the pucks would do that but whatever, I ended up calling my ISP to fix my internet connection. They informed me that the modem (which is mine) was the issue and that it kept timing out. That on-sight visit was 5 minutes long and cost me $80 but that's another story for another time.... So I ended up buying a high-end Netgear modem for $100 and yet...the problem still persisted
Second Contact:
They're now stating that the "real" issue is that the ethernet connections between #2 and #3 & #3 and #4 are too long and are losing a continuous connection. I informed them that cannot be true because they're less than the rated max distance of 100 meters (328 feet) for ethernet wiring but they said it actually has to be less than 100 feet, not meters. I disagreed with them and just chalked it up to them not reading meters vs feet correctly. However they also informed that when I configure the network (even adding additional pucks later on), I need to do so wirelessly first prior to wiring them up on a switch. For #4 and #5, I had them wired to their switches while I added them to my existing network. So I rebuilt the network and did exactly what they suggested and for nearly 3 months, NO ISSUES!!!!!!
But then recently it has all come back to the same state of weekly dropped pucks/nest camera connections. So I'm now convinced that even though #2 and #3 & #3 and #4 are connected by less than 328 feet of ethernet, that must be the problem and I'm randomly losing packets somehow. So the solution that I'm going to come up with now is using MOCA adapters between those devices, wired with RG6 Coax wiring which has longer distance runs than ethernet. The adapters I plan on using are these
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078HMDDV...olid=3C7VZVQ2PO7V4&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
Before I go ahead and do that. I'd like to hear from other enthusiast/experts on here to get their thoughts. Mostly because I'm limited to my knowledge with advanced networking but more particularly because I don't trust my ISP or the Google WIFI Support with what they thought were the problems.
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