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Installing Google Wi-Fi

Kintarō Hattori

Hi Folks,

Has anyone installed one of these successfully? Reading online I thought it was as simple as the below:

You can use the same network name and password as your last system to eliminate the need to go around the house, re-entering network credentials on all of your devices.

I set my Virgin Media Hub 3.0 to modem only mode, connected the Google Wi-Fi unit and ran the setup from the app. The phone with the app on it connected successfully but no other devices. I looked for the network on a second phone but couldn't find it, nor could other devices such as a NowTV box.

Anyone have any ideas?

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Did you set the Google Home wifi name and password to the same as what you were using on the Virgin router?

It won't happen automatically, you need to set these in the Google Wifi app.

* Note I don't have Google Wifi, the above just based on experience of how this normally works.

Kintarō Hattori

bk wrote: »

Did you set the Google Home wifi name and password to the same as what you were using on the Virgin router?

It won't happen automatically, you need to set these in the Google Wifi app.

* Note I don't have Google Wifi, the above just based on experience of how this normally works.

I did indeed, which is why I'm stumped as to it not working as people say it should.

The high horse brigade

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I did indeed, which is why I'm stumped as to it not working as people say it should.

Name it slightly differently and try. If you are using the same name and a slightly different type of encryption your devices may not connect as they think they have the wrong key.

Kintarō Hattori

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Name it slightly differently and try. If you are using the same name and a slightly different type of encryption your devices may not connect as they think they have the wrong key.

I did that too- I called it something completely different, went onto my work phone looking for the connection and it wasn't there.

I did all this quite late last night so will try it again when I'm a little fresher but I don't think I'll be doing anything different.

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I did that too- I called it something completely different, went onto my work phone looking for the connection and it wasn't there.

I did all this quite late last night so will try it again when I'm a little fresher but I don't think I'll be doing anything different.

Check that the Google Wifi wifi access point isn't set to hidden.

Also check that both 2.4GHz and 5GHz are turned on, on it.

Kintarō Hattori

I've no idea what was different tonight than the other night but it's been installed successfully. The only downside is my Vstarcam IP cameras don't work now as they only support a 2.4Ghz network. We use one to monitor our 15 month old at night.
Any thoughts on whether it's possible to force them onto this or do I need to give up on them and get an indoor nest?

The high horse brigade

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I've no idea what was different tonight than the other night but it's been installed successfully. The only downside is my Vstarcam IP cameras don't work now as they only support a 2.4Ghz network. We use one to monitor our 15 month old at night.
Any thoughts on whether it's possible to force them onto this or do I need to give up on them and get an indoor nest?

The Google WiFi is dual band. Your cameras should work they should see the 2.4ghz band, it won't see the other one the 5ghz. Do a reset and add from scratch

Kintarō Hattori

The high horse brigade wrote: »

The Google WiFi is dual band. Your cameras should work they should see the 2.4ghz band, it won't see the other one the 5ghz. Do a reset and add from scratch

I don't think that's the case where cheap Chinese electronics are concerned. Doing a quick Google on it shows other people having an issue with it as well.

The high horse brigade

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I don't think that's the case where cheap Chinese electronics are concerned. Doing a quick Google on it shows other people having an issue with it as well.

If they connected to your old WiFi they should connect to Google WiFi, there is no difference. Try manually setting the channel on the Google WiFi

Kintarō Hattori

The high horse brigade wrote: »

If they connected to your old WiFi they should connect to Google WiFi, there is no difference. Try manually setting the channel on the Google WiFi

Hands up.... I'm unsure how to do that. Would you have a link?

The high horse brigade

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Hands up.... I'm unsure how to do that. Would you have a link?

Had a Google and it tells me it's not possible to manually select a channel. That is a crazy limitation.

Kintarō Hattori

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Had a Google and it tells me it's not possible to manually select a channel. That is a crazy limitation.

Feck. Looks like I'll have to buy a €200 Nest indoor camera to do the job a €30 IP camera was doing.

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Had a Google and it tells me it's not possible to manually select a channel. That is a crazy limitation.

Definitely a downside of making things easy for people. They try to make things simple to use, but sounds like they might have gone too far and dropped important power features.

To be honest I'm not particularly impressed with Google Wifi. Somewhat overpriced for what it is IMO.

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Feck. Looks like I'll have to buy a €200 Nest indoor camera to do the job a €30 IP camera was doing.

I'd be very surprised if you can't get the cameras working with it. Try resetting them and setting them up from scratch.

One possibility is that the cameras only support a older less secure encryption and the Google Wifi is set not to support that.

To be honest, if you can't, I'd be more inclined to return the Google Wifi and get a decent router instead. It is the Google Wifi that sounds faulty, not your cameras.

Of course you could also get other cheaper cameras, £17 for Yi Cameras?

Giving Google even more money because one of their products doesn't do what pretty much every other router in the world does without issue wouldn't sit well with me.

Kintarō Hattori

bk wrote: »

Definitely a downside of making things easy for people. They try to make things simple to use, but sounds like they might have gone too far and dropped important power features.

To be honest I'm not particularly impressed with Google Wifi. Somewhat overpriced for what it is IMO.

You're not wrong there, it does seem overly simple in its operation but I guess that's to keep mass appeal.

bk wrote: »

I'd be very surprised if you can't get the cameras working with it. Try resetting them and setting them up from scratch.

One possibility is that the cameras only support a older less secure encryption and the Google Wifi is set not to support that.

To be honest, if you can't, I'd be more inclined to return the Google Wifi and get a decent router instead. It is the Google Wifi that sounds faulty, not your cameras.

Of course you could also get other cheaper cameras, £17 for Yi Cameras?

Giving Google even more money because one of their products doesn't do what pretty much every other router in the world does without issue wouldn't sit well with me.

I'll have a read of it today and see if it's possible but from what I read briefly last night it's as you mention, the cameras support basic encryption and don't like the options presented to them so do nothing. I had deleted one camera from the app and went about setting it up again but had no joy.

I don't think it's the unit being faulty, it would seem that you can't make a device that suits everyone and everything so they've built it to do specific functions. To be honest, despite the issue with the cameras I'm loving it. I've noticed a very significant increase in how quickly content loads and there have been less dropouts of the Nest cameras.

I might just try a Yi camera or similar and see how that works. Worst comes to worst, a Nest indoor camera it'll be.

Thanks for all the feedback chaps, I really appreciate it.

Dardania

Weird that you're having problems with IP camera. I have Google OnHub, and my ~4 year old Foscam connected no bother.

Regarding not being able to set the channel manually - they say that's a feature not a bug. You offload that thinking to the WiFi rather than trying to do it yourself

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I don't think it's the unit being faulty, it would seem that you can't make a device that suits everyone and everything so they've built it to do specific functions. To be honest, despite the issue with the cameras I'm loving it. I've noticed a very significant increase in how quickly content loads and there have been less dropouts of the Nest cameras.

Oh, it definitely isn't faulty, it is more of a case that the Google engineers have made a decision on what to implement.

It sounds like they have made the decision not to support, older, now unsecure wifi encryption standards. And that is fair enough, they are basically making your wifi more secure, which is obviously good.

But this results in various older wifi devices (I suspect a Nintendo DS won't work with it either) not working with it.

That is ok, but pretty much every other router I've ever looked at has an advanced or power user menu where you can normally change the settings and I think it is pretty poor Google don't do the same. They are basically treating you like a child.

As for performance, while yes it should be better then your old ISP supplied router, it's performance is nothing special for third party routers. In fact it ranks as one of the lowest performing amongst third party routers. You can get much better performance from other routers for less money.

Dardania wrote: »

Regarding not being able to set the channel manually - they say that's a feature not a bug. You offload that thinking to the WiFi rather than trying to do it yourself

Haha, I tell my boss that all the time

Really there is little thinking to be done with a decent router, IME they just work and you don't need to fiddle with them to get things to work for the most part. I recently upgraded from an TP-Link C7 to a Netgear R7800 (so nice) and all my extensive home automation devices all just worked, no issues.

I'm actually not sure if Google will continue to release Google Wifi devices. They have been very quiet about them and Google Wifi has now fallen WAY behind the rest of the market. It is still only dual band, while there are now loads of different, much better tri-band mesh systems on the market.

When Google Wifi first came out, the UI's for routers were pretty poor and it was one of the first mesh systems (not the first, but close). So these were the selling points. Those were what differentiated them from the rest of the market.

But their competitors didn't sit still, they vastly improved their apps and usability and the market was flooded by similar mesh systems from every company and many even went far beyond Google in terms of performance.

Google Wifi now looks stale, dated and overpriced in the market. You can get dual band mesh systems for half the cost of it and you can get much better performing tri-band mesh systems for the same price.

The fact that there have been no rumours of a Tri-band Google Wifi mesh system, when everyone else has one, makes it feel like they aren't interested in this area anymore.

Kintarō Hattori

Ahhh damnit! Hmnnn I wonder whether I should go down the route of something like the Netgear so. They are a solid brand, I used to sell them back in the day when I knew more about these things and had the time to learn new things.

Just doing a bit of Googling and I'm so out of touch these days but could it be a port forwarding issue?

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/googlewifi/p9oBDfn6RvM

Dardania

maybe just try plugging in one google wifi, and see if the camera can find it first? then plug in the others?

Dardania

Just to mention - do you have the camera set for DHCP? Maybe it's failing to complete the wifi connection as it can't route out...because the IP address range & gateway is new

Kintarō Hattori

Dardania wrote: »

maybe just try plugging in one google wifi, and see if the camera can find it first? then plug in the others?

I just have the one.

I've tried posting in the 'Community'..... talk about frustrating. I'm getting multiple occasions of 'post violates community policy'..... without actually telling you how.

Kintarō Hattori

Dardania wrote: »

Just to mention - do you have the camera set for DHCP? Maybe it's failing to complete the wifi connection as it can't route out...because the IP address range & gateway is new

I'm not sure, how do I check that?

Dardania

Well, if you don't know how to check, it's a fair cop you didn't set any custom settings in the past, so chances are it's on DHCP.

Did you try resetting the IP camera? And also, is it up to date in terms of firmware - often times bugs like this are ironed out over time. It might be worthwhile to enable the old wifi just to try look at the IP camera's configuration webpage (or via it's mobile phone app?) to see what way it is setup at the moment.

Kintarō Hattori

Dardania wrote: »

Well, if you don't know how to check, it's a fair cop you didn't set any custom settings in the past, so chances are it's on DHCP.

Did you try resetting the IP camera? And also, is it up to date in terms of firmware - often times bugs like this are ironed out over time. It might be worthwhile to enable the old wifi just to try look at the IP camera's configuration webpage (or via it's mobile phone app?) to see what way it is setup at the moment.

I'll give this a whirl when I get home tonight. Many thanks.

Dardania

Just to mention, when I first set up my OnHub, for a while I couldn't see it's wifi either from any device, but the phone I was setting it up with did. And it then just started working about 30 mins later. I later learned it was doing a firmware update, and hadn't come back up yet. So similar-ish circumstances to when you first setup

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Ahhh damnit! Hmnnn I wonder whether I should go down the route of something like the Netgear so. They are a solid brand, I used to sell them back in the day when I knew more about these things and had the time to learn new things.

The Netgear R7800 is one of the fastest routers around and absolutely rock solid.

I'm getting 500mb/s on my Macbook Pro, that is some serious speed, not far off ethernet levels!

Though note most people wouldn't get that speed, Macbooks are dual stream wifi, so they can take advantage of that. Actually the top end Macs have three streams so would get 750mb/s!! However most laptops are only single stream so unlikely to see those speeds, 250mb/s is more like what most would get.

All over great performance, range and reliability, I'm very happy with it.

If you need wireless mesh, then Netgears Orbi gear are considered very good, tri-band system.

However I will say that I think wifi mesh is oversold and I don't think it is suited to most Irish homes.

Sure if you have some absolutely massive US style house, then it is handy. But for most people living in a typical 3 to 4 bed, I believe it is actually more trouble then it is worth IMO.

I think most people are actually better off with a single high quality router (like the R7800) placed in a decent location (if you can near the center of the home and high up on a shelf). That will give most people fantastic performance.

Only if that doesn't work would I consider wifi mesh and even then I'd start with wireless access points feed by ethernet rather then wifi mesh.

wifi mesh comes with a bunch of issues around interference and devices handing off between access points as you walk around or connecting to further away WAP's that are best avoided if a single good router will do the job.

Dardania

bk wrote: »

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Ahhh damnit! Hmnnn I wonder whether I should go down the route of something like the Netgear so. They are a solid brand, I used to sell them back in the day when I knew more about these things and had the time to learn new things.

The Netgear R7800 is one of the fastest routers around and absolutely rock solid.

I'm getting 500mb/s on my Macbook Pro, that is some serious speed, not far off ethernet levels!

Though note most people wouldn't get that speed, Macbooks are dual stream wifi, so they can take advantage of that. Actually the top end Macs have three streams so would get 750mb/s!! However most laptops are only single stream so unlikely to see those speeds, 250mb/s is more like what most would get.

All over great performance, range and reliability, I'm very happy with it.

If you need wireless mesh, then Netgears Orbi gear are considered very good, tri-band system.

However I will say that I think wifi mesh is oversold and I don't think it is suited to most Irish homes.

Sure if you have some absolutely massive US style house, then it is handy. But for most people living in a typical 3 to 4 bed, I believe it is actually more trouble then it is worth IMO.

I think most people are actually better off with a single high quality router (like the R7800) placed in a decent location (if you can near the center of the home and high up on a shelf). That will give most people fantastic performance.

Only if that doesn't work would I consider wifi mesh and even then I'd start with wireless access points feed by ethernet rather then wifi mesh.

wifi mesh comes with a bunch of issues around interference and devices handing off between access points as you walk around or connecting to further away WAP's that are best avoided if a single good router will do the job.

Just to mention, apparently the google wifi can do ethernet mesh too if you plug them in. But in general I agree with your concerns about hand-off - not every device can deal with it. I had high hopes for the recent standard that came out standardising how mesh networks should work, but so far none of the manufacturers really follow it, preferring a roll your own approach.

Dardania wrote: »

Just to mention, apparently the google wifi can do ethernet mesh too if you plug them in. But in general I agree with your concerns about hand-off - not every device can deal with it. I had high hopes for the recent standard that came out standardising how mesh networks should work, but so far none of the manufacturers really follow it, preferring a roll your own approach.

Yes, if you use ethernet to feed each Google Wifi, they actually have very decent performance. It is when you use them wirelessly that they suffer compared to a tri-band mesh system.

But as you say, you still have issues with hand-off's, etc.

Wireless mesh systems is still a pretty new and immature technology IMO, which is why I recommend most people to keep away from it for now unless you have a very large home and badly need it. Most people will do better with just upgrading to a high quality router.

Kintarō Hattori

Didn't get a chance to mess about with the existing cameras last night as I was shattered (fell asleep on the sofa) so thought I'd take bk's advice and get a Yi camera. Others on Amazon specifically mention that they don't work on a 5Ghz network but there's no mention of that in the below one. It's probably an oversight but it's worth a shot:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/YI-Wireless-Security-Surveillance-Available/product-reviews/B07437XNQH/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_paging_btm_3?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=3

robinph

Very happy with the couple of Google WiFI points I've got setup, think I need some more though as we have very thick and un-Wifi friendly walls in the house. Had previously got a combination of multiple wifi repeaters and powerline repeaters through the house, but they were very unreliable with signal, caused problems when moving from one room to another or just wouldn't allow some devices to connect to certain combinations of the different signals. The Google Wifi is far simpler to setup and is causing far fewer complaints from the family for me to deal with.

The high horse brigade

With thick walls why would you not run cables and go with something like a Ubiquiti Unifi solution rather than struggling to get a mesh wireless system working through them. You can have an enterprise setup similar to what's used in hotels for a similar price point to Google WiFi.

https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/
https://www.custompcreview.com/reviews/ubiquiti-unifi-ap-ac-pro-wifi-access-point-review/