2Using 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.
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Velop works like a charm. Anyone want to buy a 3 Eero setup?
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I may switch to orbi???
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kinsellas Having had Orbi for almost a year, with 7 months being the largest technology failure I've ever experienced (20 years in IT), I would advise a system other than Orbi. Netgear lost stability of the orbi firmware late last summer and never regained it.
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txgunlover So, what you do recommend instead? From what I can tell, every product has issues.
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tranceme I recommend Eero.
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txgunlover Yeah, based on this thread? I have my doubts. However, it looks like I'll have to pay for Eero Plus to get the limited feature set of the Circle. I rather have it built-in like the Orbi. Seems like the Circle product as standalone is limited due to hardware. Which makes sense at the price point. I hear the latest firmware improved things for the Orbi. But, I guess with all these vendors, it's random on what gets broken. I guess I'll have to test both out.
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tranceme I use eero Plus as well as ScreenTime app from ScreenTime Labs.
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tranceme Velop works for me
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txgunlover thanks for the info. Appreciate it.
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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.
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I went to the Linksys Velop and love them. The Circle works as it should also without all these work arounds.
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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?
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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...
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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.
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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"-
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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skyfranks Is your Circle connected? If so, make sure to go into the Device list and set all your eeros to Unmanaged.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. =)
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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?
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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raminf I’m running a similar setup except I have my modem running into a pfsense router which is then connected to a 16 port active switch. The eero is connected to the switch and the circle into one of the ports on the eero. No issues anymore and performance is not an issue. I have a 300mbps connection and easily get 350mbps when testing my internet speed.
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Rcork there will be some impact just by the nature that it needs to analyze all traffic. A typical user will likely not notice the impact and the 100Mbps won't matter for that. On a gigabit connection I did see a bottle neck (OPNSense, Sophos XG or Unifi USG) depending on workload.
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Nnyan Were you able to quantify the impact. I'm very curious as i plan to update to Cox's gigabit service in the near future. Right now with 300/30, i see zero/negligible impact to all outbound connections routed through the Circle.
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Rcork Thanks for the tip. Based on reports in these threads I assumed Circle and eero could not be on the same network segment. Will try direct-wiring the gig switch into the front router and having everything else go off it.
Great to hear you're getting higher than 100Mbps performance with the setup and Circle isn't slowing things down. Gives me hope the gig fiber won't be throttled too much once it arrives.
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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!
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The silence has been deafening. Solution: Gave the eero to my dad. Bought velop to use with circle.
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Mark It sucks because I really want to use Eero. There's a lot to love, but the inability to do even basic content-filtering stuff like whitelist and blacklist sites is a dealbreaker.
The lack of a response here is an implicit indication that they can't or won't address this, but they don't want to directly say so and thus drive off customers.
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pvjones Mark —
Thanks for taking the time to write in. At this point in time, we don't have any updates to share pertaining to this matter. We have provided some suggestions above for what hopefully provides the best experience of using Circle on an eero network.
At this point, we haven't been able to identify anything that would have changed on our end, and for that reason, we don't have a timeline to share for a fix. If you submit a ticket to support@eero.com , our team is always gathering additional cases so we can take a look to see what can be discovered.
In the meantime, if the suggestion above doesn't help (connecting the Circle directly to your main eero via Ethernet), while not what we would wish for, we do understand if you wish to look elsewhere as we continue to troubleshoot this matter.
As has been suggested here before, we are also open to you sharing any feedback with us in regards to what features you'd like to see offered through our eero Plus product.
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
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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!
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skimuw Very good point! I know I immediately go into Circle and mark my eeros as unassigned whenever I add a new one to my mesh. But I totally neglected to mention that in any of my posts! Hopefully, this solves many people's problems with using Circle with eero. I'd love to hear whether people are still having issues after trying this.
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skimuw JTravers —
Thanks for sharing the tip with the community! We hope this helps those continuing to experience this issue.
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skimuw which version of Eero do you have? Circle's router list claims that Eero v1 has a serious incompatibility
https://support.meetcircle.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001381571-Is-My-Router-Compatible-with-Circle-
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jcasares Sorry for the late reply! I believe I have a version 2. The serial number on the back starts with a "B".
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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.
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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.
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zimmerman80 Good to know, thanks for the post. I'm going to give my Circle a try again, I like the finer grained controls.
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Sorry, but everyone that’s trading their eero for velop, are we talking the 1st or 2nd generation eero?
Im testing both the velop and 2nd Gen Eero (both routers, no beacons) and still undecided but leaning towards the eero.
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Chi7 Mine is a 2nd gen eero, and it has been working great with the circle for about a year or so...
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Chi7 2nd gen, and circle is connected via Ethernet.
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Also, just yesterday, the Disney circle update removed ad blocking from the app. I messaged support and they said they are sun setting the feature.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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").
