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Using Circle with Eero

Is anyone using the Circle device with Eero to manage children's devices on a home network? I like Eero's ability to "turn off" devices, but Circle seems to allow you to set filters on a per-device basis. Just not sure how well Circle works in general -- and, in particular, if it works with Eero.

124 replies

    • kinsellas
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I may switch to orbi???

      • tranceme
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      txgunlover thanks for the info. Appreciate it. 

    • Rcork
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Once i directly wired my Circle into one of the ethernet ports of the main Eero, the issues went away. I originally had the Eero connected to a switch and the Circle on the switch. This didn't work and the Circle needed to be directly wired to the Eero. I'm ok with this because i'm using Eero in bridge mode and have a separate router that the Eero is connected to. This solution won't work if you use Eero as your main router and you have any devices you need to connect via Ethernet to the Eero.

    • Mark_Smith
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I went to the Linksys Velop and love them. The Circle works as it should also without all these work arounds. 

    • JTravers
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I'm curious if anything changed for anyone with the latest eero firmware update. Or is it still not working for those NOT in bridge mode?

    • ericben
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I tried wiring Circle into the Eero ethernet port and it didn't help at all.  Any suggestions?  Some questions:

    1. Does it have to be wired into the 'main' Eero unit?  I don't have an extra ethernet point into my main unit, since I have it wired to a switch which feeds my entire house and home theatre. Can't remove that.

    2. Is there a specific setting for the Eero to make it work? Someone implied bridge mode. How do you get there in the Eero setup?

    3. Circle says that you need to set up the Circle in wireless mode first, and then connect to the ethernet port. Is there any other settings that need to be changed on the Circle? How do I change those?

    Unfortunately still frustrated...

      • nnyan
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      ericben

      1.  If your Eero is your router then yes.

      2.  Search Eero docs its simple process in the app.  But then you need some device to act as your router since in bridge mode the Eero's are no longer a router.

      3.  Search Circle docs, they should have a set up process.

    • danredwing
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    So, after months of having the Circle not work, I found a workaround...though I think it might be specific to my setup.  I'm using Century Link fiber with their branded router as modem and router with the Eero's providing wifi in bridge mode.  I tried plugging the circle into the ethernet port on my base Eero and that didn't work, but when I plugged it into the Century Link router via Ethernet, everything came to life and the Circle seems to be working just like it used to. 

    This seems contrary to the documentation on the Eero help pages, but I think it works because the Century link router is handling the "routing" 

      • nnyan
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      danredwing 

      That should work.  That is one solution to the Circle issue, get an inexpensive router with 3+ ports and use the Eero units in bridge mode.

    • skyfranks
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I'm stuck with Eero for now. Not happy but the Velop refused to work with the xbox. Anyway, until I feel like trying again with Google or another solution how is the routing quality using Eero in bringe mode? I thought a big part of Eero's appeal was more efficient routing (not that I've seen this personally, my signal stalls all the time when walking around the house) along with greater range. I have Verizon Fios and if I use Eero's in bridge mode should I shut off the 2.4ghz band and leave just the five? Verizon forced the router to have two separate SSID's for 2.4 and 5, instead of just one the way it used to be. What is the best way to handle that? 

    At this point I'm kinda over it all with Eero, they aren't what they claim to be and don't play nice with Circle, which I need. Now I'm just trying to salvage my situation until I find another vendor to switch to.

      • danredwing
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      skyfranks I had sort of given up, but then an email about this thread brought me back and I started reading and this solution gave me some inspiration to try again.  

       

      Eero hasn't been completely straight forward for me with Centurylink as you have to run it in Bridge mode, but after a few weeks of fiddling, it seemed to settle in and I'm now getting fast reliable speed all over my house. 

      • skyfranks
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      danredwing Well, this just goes from bad to worse. I put my eero's in bridge mode and then it said there was an update. 40 minutes later it still says it's downloading the update. What a joke. So buggy.

      • JTravers
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      skyfranks Is your Circle connected? If so, make sure to go into the Device list and set all your eeros to Unmanaged.

      • JTravers
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      skyfranks You should have the wifi completely turned off on your Fios router. The eeros are handling the wifi instead. Keeping the wireless on your Fios router on will just cause interference.

      And the eeros don't do anything special as far as routing. Any modern wireless router would do the routing just as well. You just need to turn the wifi off on it so it doesn't interfere with the eeros.

    • skyfranks
    • 6 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Another update, Eero update failed so I guess it'll try again later, or so it says. I went ahead and plugged my circle in directly to my base Eero (units are in bridge mode), set it up and it immediately killed my entire internet for every device. Disable circle, internet, re-enable circle, no internet. So I unplugged Circle from my Eero and plugged it directly into my Verizon router and the internet is working again, however, my upload speed was immediately halved, from 150 to just under 80. I'm so ready to torch both of these devices.

      • CEO & Co-founder
      • weaves
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      skyfranks The issue you'll have with Circle is ALL traffic for any devices that are associated with a profile will have to go through the Circle device. So it becomes the bottleneck. It only has a 10/100 Ethernet port, so you're going to see a huge degradation in your connection speed if you have a 100 mbps+ connection. We have nothing against Circle, just their product architecture significantly impacts network performance, and frankly that's what we're optimizing for.

      • skyfranks
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      weaves Fine. However, even if I pay for Eero plus you can't give me the functionality Circle can. I have an 11 year old I need robust filtering and time access options for. Also, you say you are optimizing for performance? Odd that since I put my Eero's in bridge mode, my stability and speed has improved. Even my work computer, which requires the use of VPN, has stopped getting booted every few minutes. That seems to indicate something else is not right in Eero's routing capabilities. This experience has been frustrating with no real resolution.

      • Cabbagetoe
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      weaves If this really is the issue, then improve your service.  You offer eero plus, which I'm sure most of us wouldn't mind paying for if it had even HALF of the functionality of the Circle device.

      We have all spent HUNDREDS of dollars on both devices to give us the functionality we're looking for only to be told by Circle that it's a problem with the eero and told by eero that it's a problem with the Circle.  Why don't you (as the CEO of a company we all love) actually put the task on your team to come up with a solution instead of continually blaming the other device.  Get creative.  You have a great product.  Find a way to work with lance_circle and either integrate their technology into your own product or come up with a better solution that you can monetize.  Eero Plus just isn't it for Circle users.

      • JTravers
      • 6 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      weaves Thanks for pointing this out. I'm using Circle on my greater than 100Mbps connection because for the devices I'm monitoring I don't care that much about maximum speed. (I mainly time limit my kids' access to video streaming sites.) If you set certain devices or categories to "Unmanaged," that traffic doesn't go through Circle, so it can achieve full network performance and isn't slowed down at all by Circle. Only the managed devices are affected. Please see this link for detailed analysis of when traffic is intercepted by Circle. I'm not saying this isn't a problem with Circle, just that it isn't a big deal for quite a few use cases.

      I'm able to get Circle working properly by putting my eeros in bridged mode and connecting the Circle directly to my router/firewall and not to the eeros. I frankly wish eero had better parental controls because I absolutely love my eeros otherwise. Unfortunately, there is no way to manage and set time limits with eero Plus, since you're just using DNS-based blocking. I was hoping that eero would provide something that would be the class of the category, just as eero is the class of the wireless mesh category. Integrating Circle would have been far, far superior to the parental controls currently available though eero Plus.

      • pvjones
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      weaves All I need, to consider Eero Plus a great solution, is whitelist, blacklist, and time-limit capabilities. Without that it's dead-in-the-water. Just curious if you guys have these things on the product roadmap? My kids are growing up and I need a solution before they've moved out. =)

    • MuteMosquito
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

     Has this been resolved? The chain has been quiet for a month or so. Asking as I am an eero user considering buying a circle. Also, anyone know if it is true that gen 2 eeros don’t have the issue?

      • skyfranks
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      MuteMosquito No, it's not and they aren't even trying to resolve it so don't set fire to your money. I'm still planning on trying to get off of eero again when I have some time. My eeros have been nothing but a set of issues even with Circle out of the equation. I won't be investing another dime into this system.

      • JTravers
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      MuteMosquito It hasn't been resolved and is still an issue with gen 2 eeros, as well. However, if you have another router you can use, you can put the eeros in bridge mode and use them only for their wireless mesh and not for routing. Then you'd connect the Circle directly to the other router and NOT to the eeros, and it should work (at least it does for me). 

    • raminf
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    So I bit the bullet and changed my network topology last weekend based on reports here so I could get the Circle working again. The cable modem now goes into my old Airport Extreme box. Wired directly into that is the eero (in bridge mode) and the Circle box. The eero's out port then goes into a gigabit ethernet switch which then goes to my wired devices. To make it work I had to backup the Circle settings, then do a full factory reset so I could 're-pair' it with the Airport Router and then restored the settings from backup.

    I'm going to run some time trials and see if it makes sense for the gigabit bridge to go directly into the Airport Extreme or leave it on the eero.

    Basically, as suggested here I patched in an Airport Extreme as the main router and had the Circle go into that instead of into the eero. So far things seem to be working. The devices the kids use to access the network all seem to be abiding by the filters.

    FWIW, I did try the eero-plus service. Found the parental filtering features lacking.

    My one concern is if this is slowing down the whole network because the Circle box doesn't have a gig ethernet port. I'm also signed up to get Sonic's fiber service later in the Summer. Once that goes in not sure how much of a bottleneck all this will this be.

    tl;dr: router/eero/circle combo seems to be working... so far.

      • nnyan
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      raminf  raminf  your 100Mbps connection will limit you t that speed if in the direct path.  Circle around poisons your traffic through one connection so it might be an issues if you are pushing over 100Mbps.

      • raminf
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Nnyan Thanks, I sort of expected it might be.

      But my understanding is Circle uses ARP spoofing so it'll likely slow things down during address lookup. Once the connection has been established the Circle should no longer be involved and things should run at the router's max speed. If that's an incorrect assumption then I need to revisit the whole network.

      The Airport box isn't the fastest, but that's what the eeros replaced and I had sitting around. I've also disabled the wifi part of the Airport since that's what the eeros are for. Once the Sonic fiber service comes in I'll look for something wired-only and faster.

Content aside

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