Google Wifi (AC1200)

I have a Gen1 Google Wifi. Never had problems, but recently something SUPER weird happened. It lost all connections to internet... except the ONE device that was streaming, that one kept working as if nothing happened. I had to factory reset all mesh devices to make it work again.

My 1st gen Google Pucks have been solid for the last few years. House is 2300sq-ft, two floors plus it reaches out to my backyard which is nice if I want to have my phone and a speaker outside. Only recently have they started to have problems and drop connections, but I'm thinking that might be more because of their age. I started buying some Ubiquiti gear to replace them. My router is a little Intel NUC running PFSense with the Ubiquiti controller running in a Jail. Although I may just buy a Unifi Express or Cloud Gateway and consolidate everything. That's one thing I liked about the Google system was that all my options (limited as they were) were available in the app. No fuss, no fighting. If I wanted to setup stuff in a sandbox, it was kind of a pain although my cable modem has multiple LAN ports so segregating was easy.

My Google WiFi decided to die on me a few days ago. Trying hard resets but nothing works. Really want a Ubiquiti system but it aint cheap for a big house. Right now every old router and access point I found in my garage are humming away to give some sort of coverage, but I am soon running out of ideas for new ssid’s… well… ehh…

I see, I have the original Google Wi-Fi and they don't support Mesh when wired to the gateway.

It's in double NAT because the original Google Wi-Fi don't support VLAN, I don't have that option in the Google home app. You've got it because you have the PRO version. It's not a problem and actually solves one problem I was having with Pi-Hole. With Pi-Hole in the Google network all the DNS requests came from the Google router, even when Google DHCP was configured to provide the pi-hole address. Now, with the pi in the other network it works as expected, router does DHCP and gives clients the pi address as DNS and they use it. It allows me to tell the family that if they want ads they can use one network and if they don't, use the other.

TP Link Deco 6E - had it for about 2 years and it's been good and super reliable. There were some concerns recently about TP Link routers phoning home to China, so something worth looking into I guess if you're worried. The management app (so take it for what it is, requires a phone app to manage) is decent, although a little annoying with the upsell of the safety suite. The feature set is great - guest network, IoT network, QoS, VPN server and client, 3 ports (only gigabit though) on each device, and 6Ghz wireless backhaul (or wired is also supported). At the time the Wifi 7 model just came out and was much more expensive so I didn't really see the point. If I were buying a new router today I'd probably go for a Wifi 7 model. Another upgrade in that is it looks like the Wifi 7 model has 1x10Gbps port and 2x2.5Gbps so that's some good future-proofing right there. Came from having Google Wifi, which I think was overall a little bit better, but I'm not upset about it. Obviously Ubiquiti is the gold standard if you wanna go that deep into it, but for a more casual (and much more affordable) solution I am not upset with my Deco. It's about $300 for 1 - have a 3-pack (~$700). If you don't need mesh, I've had good luck with Asus routers in the past and last I heard reviews for them are pretty good. Around $300 the TUF BE3600 looks like it might have all modern features you'd want.