[Closed] A (Google) Mesh question or two

I’ve hardwired two additional routers as access points and have 4 wireless points all working fine. No SSID faffing required. Oh and to answer the question, you can’t hardwire the wireless points

Soooooo can you hardwire the WiFi points or can you only hardwire the routers?

I was going to say that you can..... BUT they've changed it - I've just checked my Google WiFi and one point that was definitely hardwired is now 'only' connected via wifi.

Not sure when this happened but I suspect it was fairly recently.

And to clarify, my experience is with Google Nest not Google Wi-fi which is different!

Other mesh networks definitely support wired and hybrid backhaul (the network connecting the mesh access points). I'd go for one of those anyway.

We will, not immediately, have an office garden.

An office garden could get wet, I can certainly recommend a garden office though.

Anyhoo, whilst wired back haul is probably a good requirement if you’re starting from scratch, just FYI that I’ve got good results with a wireless mesh where one node is close to a back window of the house, and the other is in the workshop/office which is 35m or so away down the end of the garden. This is because WiFi propagates quite well through open air, it’s solid walls and others objects that tend to prevent it getting coverage in buildings.

Just make sure your broadband works with Google. Ive got a brand new router and point sat in a box as it wont work with Sky

Sky is really quite picky about what it works with it seems.
Google very much less so - I think there's one router that Nest WiFi doesn't play nicely with.

I've got a TP Link Deco set up and it's been great. You can daisy chain them hard wired and I did consider doing this however I initially set up wirelessly and they're brilliant. No dead spots at all and get really strong signal out in the garden...not a massive garden to be fair but my previous wifi network with wifi extenders were nowhere near as good in terms of coverage or performance.

The original Google WiFi all the nodes were the same and could all be hard wired. The nest WiFi ( or Google WiFi 2) has 2 types of node, Router and point. Only the router type has an ethernet port. But like the original you can have multiple router points hardwired as part of the mesh (single SSID). You can also use Google WiFi nodes as nodes for a nest WiFi.

I have had both systems and our current mesh has 2 router nodes and 1 point node. Only one of the routers is in primary mode (i.e. it is connected to the WAN modem).

The original Google WiFi all the nodes were the same and could all be hard wired.

OK, that would explain my current setup then.
I have 3 x original Google WiFi units (with both WAN and LAN ports) and had one node hardwired to the master unit.
Since Google have pushed everything to the Google Home app the hard wired node is now showing as connected by WiFi - in fact there isn't even any other option.
So it seems they've disabled the WAN port on the nodes as the Nest WiFi nodes don't have them.
Kinda annoying.

But just doing a search I've found this that seems to say that you can hardwire them!
https://support.google.com/wifi/answer/7215624?hl=en-GB#zippy=%2Cuse-multiple-google-nest-wifi-routers-google-wifi-points-andor-onhub-devices

Think of the nest router node as an upgraded google wifi node (the radios improved for one). The nest point nodes are a new lighter node with added smart speaker.

WHere does the home app say how the nodes are connected. Mine are all wifi connected currently but there is nothing in the settings pages that screams out to me as detailing this.

That article is interesting in that it says you can use the WAN point on the secondary, tertiary etc nodes to daisy chain. Interesting, I wonder if you can also use it as a LAN port.

How long is the garden? A mesh device at an upstairs rear window will cover 95% of British gardens, moreso if you have an additional device in the window of the 'office' that you're using. I would expect 100' to work ok, our 50' garden (so fairly average) still has full 5 bars everywhere

We have a garden 'office' with a Google WiFi thingy inside. We have one Google Wifi point in the living room wired to our Virgin router. That is then connected via an ethernet cable to a second point in the office.

We considered just going wireless, but the office is insulated by foil-backed kingspan which has a bit of a Faraday cage effect.

We have the slightly older model, I think. We bought a 2 pack and they both had ethernet ports. Dead easy to set up - it took me longer to think of a WiFi name than anything else.

WHere does the home app say how the nodes are connected. Mine are all wifi connected currently but there is nothing in the settings pages that screams out to me as detailing this.

I've still got the Google WiFi app installed and it shows it there.
Where it say Connection type it used to say Wired.
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