Nest Wifi and Google Wifi are two popular solutions for improving your homes network capabilities. Both of these are mesh system which on a quick basic level means they extend network access by the main router unit talking to a “point” which extends the router with 2 sets of antennas. One set of the antennas is meant for receiving the signal from nearby devices while the other is sending that data to the router for processing this is much faster over a standard repeater where your antennas are doing both tasks.
But device prioritization is incredibly important if your home network either has traffic that is “mission-critical” or you simply want to avoid buffering when streaming the Tiger King on Netflix. Nest Wifi and Google Wifi both have device prioritization capabilities but they are not what you’re used to in other router’s let’s jump into it!
How To Setup a Priority Device
- Open your Google Home App.
- Tap the wifi option.
- Under device find the device you wish to make the priority device.
- Select the device you want to have prioritized traffic.
- At the bottom you select how long you want the device to be prioritized for.
- Hit the save icon and you should be good to go.
As you can see its very simple on pen and paper but its too simple to the point of being a detriment for most users. If you’re gaming for instance while also streaming you will be limited by that time limit to have device prioritization. This simply means if your 4 hours pass your device will no longer be prioritized and you could start to experience degraded performance. While there is a way to turn on gaming preferred traffic this feature is only applicable to Google Stadia. This feature in fact only turns on when Stadia is detected making it useless for any other gaming or streaming a large video file.
Are There Any Workarounds?
It doesn’t look like it the nest best thing is to simply create a group of devices to shut their internet access off when you need to permanently have the “priority device”. This is of course a terrible feature if you’re living with multiple individuals who also need access to the internet but don’t need to be a priority. This is one of the most highly requested features on Reddit, Facebook Groups & Internet Forums that I have run across and Google in traditional Google fashion has not responded.
Now, this doesn’t mean Nest Wifi is bad in fact its actually quite good even though it only comes with Wifi 5 its performance in many benchmarks are equal to that of the big players in the space. Furthermore its design is very attractive and minimalistic compared to many of the bulky solutions on the market and for each Nest Point you have it doubles as a speaker. This makes expanding your smart home a lot easier (the wifi system even has its own unique commands to turn off devices for your kids among other interesting features).
For now, though, we wait until Google rolls out an updated providing proper device prioritization options for their users so their home networks are running as efficiently as they can be. If you’re a Nest Wifi user I would love to hear your thoughts on the system so please comment below!
