Best products from r/GoogleWiFi

Your best case scenario would be to wire it into the same Google WiFi puck that is plugged into the modem. The second best scenario is if any of your two remote Wifi nodes were wired to the first, main node, then plugging your Xbox into one of those would mean your Xbox is basically wired directly to your modem.

As for anything else, it will depend on how good the wireless antennas are. However in my experience, I've found the wireless antennas on the Google WiFi pucks to be much better than any other common devices (phones, computer, consoles) for pretty obvious reasons.

So unless your Xbox One has amazing antennas that can beat a router, your second best option would be to plug you Xbox directly into one of the two remote nodes, which will basically be acting like a super WiFi antenna for your Xbox.

But, I'm a gamer too, and I feel your pain and also share you enthusiasm for trying to improve it. Here are some more general tips that can improve your internet even more 😁

1. Let's start FREE. When playing on your Xbox, open up the Google Wifi app and make your Xbox the "priority device" for an hour or two. Other people browsing the web or watching Netflix won't notice, as if their connection is a little spottier, nothing really changes. Netflix still has few minutes of buffering ahead, so if it drops for a split second or two, nothing happens. For gaming, you'll feel every one of those same drops as lag.
   
2. In the Google Wifi app settings, enable IPV6! Your ISP might not support it yet, but if not, nothing changes. If they do support it, awesome! Goodbye DNS issues, and hello speed improvements! I believe the Xbox One also supports IPV6, just check to see if it's also an optional setting or on by default. Sorry PS4 users, still IPV4 only :(
   
3. Another obvious one, but turn off every device you aren't using while gaming. Set any PC's in your house to download their automatic updates at a time you aren't gaming. Cut down on the number of cordless phones and other 2.4GHz devices in your house. Keep other device's cables away from the pucks and Ethernet cables. Just do other similar things in that same line of thought.
   
4. Move your pucks around. See if you can make improvements, the app can rate how strong the connection is. See if different places can achieve "Great" vs "Good" for strength. Try to avoid having a microwave between them. Try having them out in the open as possible, instead of behind a TV or inside a desk.
   
5. For every part of your setup that IS wired, such as from the modem to the first puck and your Xbox to any puck, upgrade to CAT7 Ethernet cable at the shortest length actually needed. (Before I go forward and people throw shade, yes CAT7 is probably overkill for most people, but we're talking about gaming, overkill is in). Here's a link my recommendation of a proven, low price CAT7.
   
6. OP has DSL, but for anyone that has Cable, same logic as last point, but for your Coax cables. Here is a quad shielded Coax cable. OP maybe see if there is such a thing as shielded phone line?
   
7. Another thing for cable users: BUY YOUR OWN MODEM! First off, it pretty much pays for itself as a lot of cable companies are charging you every month for renting your modem. For Comcast/Xfinity, buying your own modem instantly cuts $10 off your monthly bill, forever. Your modem pays for itself in less than a year. But besides the savings, how can it help gaming? Well, you can buy yourself a modem with a lot of "channels". Think of channels as number of water pipes coming into your house, but for internet signal. Right now your modem might have 4-8. If your neighbors are all using the internet too, they might get congested. If your modem supported 32 channels, your pull would be much more distributed and you might see a more consistent, less congested internet. Here is my personal recommended modem of choice but if that's too pricey, downgrade to the model that only has 16 channels, SB6183. OP, again I don't have DSL, but do some research to see if buying your own modem device can improve your connection, or at the least save you money if you are "renting" from your ISP.
   
   Hopefully that all helps you, and you can enjoy some lag-free gaming!

Is it possible - Absolutely

Will it work for what you need - Maybe

I am assuming they only provide WiFi and not a wired connection in your apartment. If you do have a wired connection just use that to connect to GW.

First how fast is the apartments WiFi? The reason I ask is just to understand where a bottleneck could happen. If the apartment WiFi is really fast, you will probably see a significant degradation in speed. If it isn't blazing fast you may not notice as much of a speed hit. It just comes down to the capacity of the link.

Second what are you trying to accomplish? It is just for streaming or general internet access or are you planning on gaming where low latency is critical? Streaming and general internet access will probably be ok, gaming most likely will see significant latency. This is due to all of the additional "hops" you will have to make. Now the apartment WiFi itself may have poor latency to begin with.

To try this out you need a Wireless Client with an ethernet jack out. There are a couple different ways you can do this.

1. To just check and try it out you can always use a Windows machine with both WiFi and an open ethernet jack to bridge the two connections. Search for "How to Share Wireless Over Ethernet on Windows 10" on Google for some examples of how to do this. Your Windows machine will act like a router and pass the connection from WiFi to Ethernet. This really isn't practical for the long term, but it might work for something quick or a particular use case.
   
   
2. You can get a WiFi router that is DD-WRT compatible and as mentioned flash it with DD-WRT and set it up as a client.
   
   
3. You can get a small travel router that supports client mode natively. Something like this would work, https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Wireless-Travel-Router-TL-WR902AC/dp/B01N5RCZQH.
   
   I am assuming that the apartment WiFi is dual band, ie both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. This may go against some people's thinking but when setting this up with either option 2 or option 3 above, you may want to try only using the 2.4 GHz band to connect to the apartment WiFi. There are multiple reasons why this might work better. First 2.4GHz propagates better over longer distances and through walls. So depending where the apartment access point is located you may get a better connection on 2.4 GHz. Second since 5GHz does not propagate through walls very well, especially fireproof walls typically in apartments, this would be better for you to use for your local WiFi network as you will have less interference from your neighbors. Finally, by keeping your backhaul link to the apartment on 2.4GHz and your local WiFi mainly on 5GHz you minimize the interference and time sharing between the two. I would at least try this configuration.
   
   Good luck and please report back on your success or failure. ;-)

What we've done is put everything that matters on the main network, and everything that doesn't matter on the guest network. That includes the IOT type devices, true guests/friends that come by, etc.

If you like the Google Wifi performance/security, but want to add more network segmentation, you could always add something like an Edgerouter X ($50) downstream of the Google Wifi puck. Create a completely separate network or networks behind it, and all the Google Wifi box sees is a single IP coming from it.

We've been through quite a few different wireless setups over the past few years, including ones much more pricey and complex than the Google setup, but nothing comes close to its reliability, ease of use, and performance throughout the house. Going back to a standard router + extenders would seem like the dark ages at this point. It's also fun not having to tweak router settings every week or two as things crop up; it just works.

orbi is a beast on speed, but googles app is better. The app has some downsides, like when the cloud barfed a reset a bunch of our units.

I have my onhub/GW in wired gigabit backhaul mode and it outperms pretty much everything. if i didn't have gigabit backhaul I would have kept orbi.

Another option since you're already using MoCA. Check out these actiontec bonded MoCA adapters you can use that to backhaul GW and potentially get the best of both worlds.

I now use cheap gigabit switches. I tend to use whatever I can find on sale.

So for the remote ones I get 5 port ones that are made out of metal and get for $20 - $25 each on sale.

Down the basement and in the computer room I use 24 port switches that were more expensive but not home and do NOT remember the brand.

But I look at switches as a commodity and brand means little. Kind of the polar opposite for mesh.

The five porters look like

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Ethernet-Unmanaged-Protection-GS105NA/dp/B0000BVYT3

But I do NOT believe they are actually Netgear. But this does look exactly like them.

I usually buy a couple when I find them on sale and keep extras in the closet so we have when needed. BF is the best time to stock up for the year.

Thank you so much for taking the time to go in detail. I really appreciate that. So the home I’m in right now was constructed in 2004 with no brick or plaster. And when I just ran a Speedtest standing in front of the back hauled puck I got 370mb. I see your point of devices not need 1gb of data speed, but was just trying to get that to stretch as much as possible across the house. We have about 50 devices on the network right now. So with the new house being built I wanted to go in with the best possible solution. Would you say it’s worth while to get the new nest WiFi router and have the pucks be the supporting cast? I can hardwire 4 devices in the new house.

I just found this on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D199JQP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_pLKWDbF8BAT69

Maybe I can use that to hardwire and power the access points in the ceiling? The cost for the builders to run extra Ethernet cables is ridiculous at about $200 per data point.

It's all fine, just check Amazon and get the colour you need... Like it's FLAT. I have it running invisibility right under all my trim instead of through walls... I mean I have a direct hole here and there to go through a room, but it's pretty well hidden.

https://www.amazon.com/Ethernet-Cable-Higher-Bandwidth-Network/dp/B017P34XUC

Yeah, I was thinking about doing the same. There’s a cheap Netgear managed switch that looks like it would do the trick, but for the same reason as you mentioned, I won’t be able to trace what device it’s coming from.

Do you do anything else to help trace activity and log the urls or domains visited by device? I don’t know if a WiFi sniffing solution is overkill/overcomplicated.

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Coupler-Ethernet-Extender-Adapter/dp/B016B13U9Y

Our house is 3k square feet and 3 pucks just seems to cover enough to where we can get full speed pretty much everywhere, for 6k you'll need at least 4. Our stone patio interferes on the one going from basement ceiling to outdoors on the patio but still pulls 100-200mbps

I remember with our ac66u we never even used the 5ghz it was so bad compared to the 2.4ghz lmao

Wow, literally every comment in here so far is wrong...

Yes, OP, you can use the coax in your house for networking. What you’re looking for are MoCA adapters. I use them for backhaul between my pucks and they’re just as fast as Ethernet.

The only situation where they won’t work is if you have Satellite TV. DVB-T and MoCA don’t get along. If you have cable TV, though, you’ll be fine.

In my case, I have the main AT&T Modem plugged into my OnHub (or GWifi puck in your case) to one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A121WN6/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This switch feeds all the machines in my office.

I also have another one connected to the farthest OnHub (in your case GWifi puck) in my bonus room to connect my Smart 4K TV, my XBox 360 S, PS3, etc.

Unfortunately I don't have the pre-wired "hardware points" to leverage the ethernet backhaul, but it still will let me get 250/300mbps speeds just via the mesh network to anything connected to the switch in the bonus room.

Yes, assuming your are sure it’s not the cable.

Anker USB 3.0 Portable Gigabit Ethernet Adapter Supporting 10/100/1000 Mbps https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NOP70EC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_7r6MBbT30EXFF

/u/ewleonardspock is correct the Actiontec Bonded MoCA 2.0 Ethernet is perfect.

Also found this tool to be helpful sorting out wacky coax lines in a rented home:
Klein Tools VDV501-825 Cable Tester

Yeah. Just make sure it's an unmanaged switch. I use this and I haven't had any issues.

TP-Link 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Network Switch | Ethernet Splitter | Plug-and-Play | Traffic Optimization | Unmanaged (TL-SG1008D) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EVGIYG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_cYe4CbR13PWFT

I'm sure it's fine but I bought one of these cuz I thought it looked better.

You can if you have multiple pucks, and that one is part of the mesh. if not you might be better off looking into a wifi to ethernet adapter, something like this https://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Ethernet-2-WiFi-Universal-Wireless-GWU637/dp/B018YPWORE

I've been using this one (as well as a smaller 4 port version) and has handled my gigabit service well.

If you want to hardwire multiple devices to the puck, you just need a simple gigabit switch. Cheap, under $20. like this one.

Its basically like a USB Hub, if you remember those.

This is it.

Check this out at Amazon.com
TP-Link 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Network Switch | Ethernet Splitter | Plug-and-Play | Traffic Optimization | Unmanaged (TL-SG1008D) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EVGIYG/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_YX1VDb5XPWW65

I'm using this guy right here, inexpensive and well reviewed with a little room for expansion for you.

https://smile.amazon.com/TP-Link-Gigabit-Ethernet-Desktop-TL-SG1008D/dp/B001EVGIYG/

Please just buy one of these for $18 and avoid the hassle

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A121WN6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My system is

Modem -> Google Wifi -> switch - > (multiple computers/tv/game systems) -> switch -> (more computers) -> Google Wifi puck #2

And this works great

The 8 port is on sale for $16 when you click the little coupon thing. Might just grab one for the heck of it.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00A121WN6/ref=ppx_yo_mob_b_track_package_o0_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1