
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.
-
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.
-
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...
-
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" -
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Has anything been solved on this thread yet? I'm having the same issues with the Eero's & Circle and if you are not in the USA you cannot use the Plus functionality (even though I have paid for it, does not work)
Eero should integrate the Circle software and do a deal with Circle to take a percentage revenue share off each user, that way they don't have to develop their Plus solution which does not work.
Eero could make far more money allowing open integration into their hardware and again taking a share of the revenue.
weaves & lance_circle, as you can see from all the threads, you both seem to have very unhappy customers as you guys can't or don't want to find a solution, surely this must concern you.
Integration, integration, integration, allowing others to integrate into your respective solutions will take both your great products to the next level.
Now hopefully somebody will come back to us on this thread with a solution to fix the issue!
-
Hi Everyone. I think I just figured out my setup and both eero and Circle are working well together! I wanted to share in case it might help someone else. Here's my setup. The eero is plugged directly into my AT&T wireless router. I don't even use the wireless connection coming from this router. I setup the eero in Automatic mode (I didn't need it to be in bridge mode as some posts say, but might be different for you) and it has its own wifi network separate from the AT&T wifi router. Circle is plugged into the second ethernet port on the back of the eero. The LED on the eero might turn red. That's OK for now. Log onto your Circle and go to Devices. Any devices having to do with eero, change it to Unassigned. This means Circle wont mess with it directly. The LED on the eero should turn back white and eeros should start working automatically. Now all the devices that you want Circle to manage must log onto the eero wifi network. That's just fine for me because that was the point of getting eero in the first place. Any new device that logs onto the eero network will be detected by Circle and you can make the settings however you wish for that device. Circle will manage that device through eero, without managing the eero itself. You must keep the AT&T router password a secret from those you don't want logging onto that one because Circle will not detect those devices. This is easy for my family, as you just make the wifi network name something obscure and they wont mess with it. That seems to work in my case. Both devices are on the same network and working beautifully together. Hope this helps someone. Good luck!
-
I have an Eero v1 and just bought a Circle ( meetcircle.com ) to control my kid's use of YouTube.
I want to confirm that:
1) Circle did NOT work, even after plugging directly to the master Eero. Adding any level of filtering blocked all sites.2) I was able to plug my old Asus router to the modem, disable wi-fi on the Asus, put Eeero on bridge mode, and connect both Eero and Circle to Asus. With this setup, Circle works as expected.
Hope this helps, as there was some contradicting and old information about this.
-
I am using Eero v2, and just bought Circle. It is plugged into a switch which directly connects to my router Eero (because I have a 90mbps connection and Circle's wifi isn't fast enough). Eero devices are Unmanaged, and everything is working well with no trouble setting it up or filtering.
Circle seems to have finer grain control, and I like the fact there is a default circle when new devices are added. And you can prevent VPN connections which would bypass the filtering, for those clever kids.
-
I am a network consultant and I'm considering buying the eero pro 6 3-pack, but we rely on Circle to keep our 6 kids safe. I haven't seen a better solution yet. Have the performance issues with eero + Circle been resolved? I want to move to eero due to performance issues with a very old Asus router but we can't give up the Circle protection.
-
Circle worked perfectly with my older generation Eeros. We upgraded to Eero 6, and now we’re having the same issues.
My bet is there’s new security or routing rules that are blocking the Circle’s ARP packets from controlling devices correctly.
I’m going to try putting a switch between my modem and the Eero, then plugging my circle and eero into the switch. I’m going to put my Eero into bridge mode and let my modem handle the DHCP. That’ll make the eero a little more dumb about what’s happening on the network, and hopefully allow Circle to work correctly.
I’ll try to post again letting you know if it worked or not.
-
Circle has been working fine for me but i've always run Eero in bridge mode. I have another router with the LAN port plugged into a switch. The gateway Eero is connected to the switch and then i have the Circle plugged into one of the gateway Eero's ethernet ports. None of my other Eero's are hardwired which i believe makes a difference.
-
I just bought the Eero 6+ and I can confirm that the issue still remains. I had to unplug the Circle for the managed devices to work. Even when traffic was allowed, the managed devices would have major speed and packet loss issues that made it impossible to do Minecraft or Discord voice. It took over 2 hours with Eero on the phone to diagnose that it was the Circle, but I've unplugged the circle and now everything works.
But it's frustrating - not sure how to put parental controls on now. They tried to tell me Eero had parental controls, but it has no time limits on usage types (I can't say "Allow only 1 hour of games a day"), just the ability to set a schedule for them (e.g., "Don't allow it after 11 pm").