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questions prior to purchasing

Hello community residents!

After struggling for too long with a modem/router (TalkTalk, UK) at the far end of my flat in the bedroom with a powerline wifi extender at the other end in my lounge, I feel it's time to take the mesh plunge. But I have some eero specific questions before I do

  1. Being in a flat, there's quite a lot of neighbouring wifi signals, some even stronger than my own.  As such, I manually set the clearest channel, mainly for the extender where we spend most of our time.  I understand that eero broadcast simultaneously on channels 1-9 on 2.4ghz and all channels on 5ghz.  Is this true?

    The reason being is that I'm also interested in google wifi that monitors and dynamically selects the best channels.  Is eero better in this respect?  FWIW, my extender is currently on channel 11, could I run into issues?
     
  2. My ISP supplied router cannot be set to bridge mode.  I'm not planning on having anything else plugged into it other than the master mesh router, so is double NAT something I need to worry about? I have been using team viewer during the lockdown, but I understand this gets round double NAT independently. Is this true?
     
  3. I'm proposing to use my current powerline wifi extender as a powerline only to feed my TV and it's various devices. I could potentially use this for ethernet backhaul. Is this viable with eero.  The extender currently shows up on my master modem/router as a device which leads me to believe it's not 'transparent'. 
     
  4. A general mesh question: We are an Alexa enabled household. Two in the lounge in stereo, one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom. The lounge ones, in the same room as the extender always fall off the network.  After investigating last weekend it appears that the larger echo devices have very powerful wifi radios. One of them seems to occasionally connect to the master router whilst the other stays on the extender.

    I have all my echo devices on the separated 2.4ghz band to enable multiroom music.  I tried leaving them on the separate 5ghz band and they sometimes fall off - even in the same room! I've also tried combining the 2.4/5ghz bands into a unified SSID and let band steering do its job but they still play up. I'm

    I'm assuming a mesh network will erase these as it presents a single, unified network, rather than the two networks (with the same SSID) my extender and master router present. Is this correct?

FWIW, moving the master modem/router is out of the question. We live in rented accommodation and it has to sit where the phone line socket is, which unfortunately is in the bedroom on the furthest wall possible from the lounge.

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm hoping some detailed answers will help me make a decision.

4 replies

    • paolaorsini
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Hello, I just bought an Eero pro + beacon a few days ago so I am pretty new in this. 

    I bought because in my house I didn't have enough strength to have a good quality internet in my room (where I am working right know) and I have heard that extenders not always Is the right choice.

    So my experience se far, I have arris router/moden from my IPS and I connect my erro pro next to the modem and the beacon in my room.

    Now  I have a great strong signal and no internet drops so that make my day

    About the doble NAT it said in the support that it could be an issue for the performance but I really didn't see a difference. I mean I did a test with doble NAT and also turn in off the wifi from the IPS modern and I had the same speed in my Eero in both cases.

    The bad thing I have not able to resolve is that my cable provider give me 600 mpbs (I tested wired and wireless ) but Eero some how is limiting mi speed to max 80 mpbs via wired and wireless 

    • Asmithb
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I purchased a couple of eero's a couple of weeks ago and use Plusnet as my ISP so this is my understanding:

    1. On 2.4Ghz if eero uses a 40MHz channel width it will use channels 1-9 however if it detects interference from neighbours if will reduce to a 20MHz channel width. In my case if use the Mac built in wireless diagnostics and my eero is using advertising on channel 1 and using a 20Mhz bandwidth. This is right for me as my neighbours use channel 6.  On 5GHz the standard eero only has one 5GHz radio so only uses the lower (non DFS) 5GHz spectrum so as it uses a 80MHz channel width it does use all the available channels.

    2. My Plusnet hub one doesn't support bridge mode so, like you, I had a choice of doubling NATing or putting the eeros into bridge mode. I don't have YouView, a Xbox or Playstation so I tried double NAT first and it is working for me.

    3. I use Ethernet wired backhaul but if I was you I would triy wireless first and then test the powerline adapters and see what gives you the best WiFi performance on the remote eero.

    4. I have my eeros at either end of my bungalow and the devices roam between them. I would expect the Echos to connect to the strongest eero (my Dot is by one eero and stays connected to it).

    I had doubts before I purchased mine so I brought them from Amazon and carefully unpackaged them so I could return them if they didn't meet my needs.

    Andy

      • greg_edwards69
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Asmithb Thanks Andy,  your experience with this is most useful.

      1. I thought it was something like that.  As long as Eero actively looks for the least active channel and dynamically switches, I should be okay.  I do wonder why they don't use the higher channels on 2.4ghz though.

      The channel width switching is useful.  Looking into my existing setup, I think this is one of the causes of my issues with my powerline extender, it only broadcast on 40mhz with no option to switch to 20mhz, so I'm likely getting interference on this band.  Curiously it behaves like the eero on the 5ghz band though and broadcasts on 80mhz across all the lower channels.

      2. I have a youview box but I only use it for freeview and player - I don't have any multicast pay for channels coming from my isp, so I don't think double NAT will be an issue here, other than potentially Teamviewer.  If I do run into an issue I have discovered that I put the Eero router (or other mesh router) into the DMZ option of the talktalk router which passes NAT straight through to the Eero. I don't think this will cause any security issues as I would simply be letting Eero manage incoming and outgoing traffic rather than my talktalk router.

      3. Yes, I will try mesh only first as suggested.  Looking into my extender again, it's only the wifi part that shows up as a device on my router, not the powerline itself, so I believe it should be transparent and okay to use for ethernet backhaul.  At least I have options, wifi only to TV, powerline to TV or both with ethernet backhaul.

      4. If the mesh network shows up as a single network then I'm confident the Echo's will behave themselves. 

      I have a play with my existing gear at the weekend. It appears that my lounge echos connect to the main router in the bedroom if the lounge extender is rebooted, curiously they don't automatically reconnect to the extender again unless I restart them. I figure that if Eero dynamically finds the best channel then they should never fall off the network.

      I also unified my 2.4ghz and 5ghz channels again to let band steering do its job.  I've managed split channels more out of habit for years but it seems sometimes it causes more problems than not.  At the moment, everything appears to be behaving as it should (although if I monitor the access points with NetSpot I seems to get the odd drop out from the extender every now and then).  So I think I'm going to persevere with it as is for the time being and hopefully pickup an Eero system later down the line maybe in the black Friday sales (although I see that QVC are doing a 2 node pack for £135 at the moment which might tempt me!).

    • greg_edwards69
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Just thought I’d reply to myself with an update in case any one else had similar questions to me. 

    I did indeed go with the eero system, and bought three units brand new on eBay for a very good price!  I installed it a few days ago and I’m very pleased with it so far.

    I’m plugged into the existing talktalk supplied modem/router combo device.  As previously mentioned, it can’t be set to modem only mode, or bridge mode, so I’m am double nat-ting. However, all seems good so far. I initially bought two eeros, hoping the signal would reach from one end of my flat to the other, but wasn’t possible. I got round it by using my powerline as the back haul, but I ideally wanted to go completely wireless, so I bought a third unit to bridge the gap.

    I have put the eero gateway into the dmz of my modem/router, but honestly, I don’t think I even need to do that. Everything seemed to work fine before doing so.

    I’ve unplugged my old WiFi extender, but I’ve left the WiFi live on the old modem/router.  Even though it’s only a few feet away from the eero gateway, I don’t appear to be experiencing any interference, in fact, the signal is far more stable and strong. Besides, the two routers live in the bedroom where my master phone socket it, so it’s no big deal. 

    I have put my old powerline transmitter in their other Ethernet socket of the gateway eero to send to the receiver my tv unit in the lounge. However, I tested the signal to my tv and attached devices and the signal is faster wirelessly over eero than the powerline plugged into eero. This is curious though as I got a faster via powerline from the old router. Eero seems to slow the powerline down. This is a problem though. I’ll leave it its place for the time being as a contingency backup whilst I use the wireless signal.

    Only issue I did have was with my youview box. It wouldn’t stream anything or even pull up information in the various menus. I initially thought the worst, but resetting the network settings did the trick. It appears youview is fine with double Nat. Likewise with teamviwer. I’ve been working from home the last couple of weeks and I’ve been able to remote into my work PC fine. 

    Lastly, it’s cured the issues I was having with my echo devices. They all stay stable and connected to the nearest access point. Multiroom music has never worked so well. 
     

    Overall I’m impressed. The setup was dead simple, although I wish the power adaptor cables were longer. I had to buy a usb-c extension for one of them to get it where I wanted it. Unfortunately, the best place to place a mesh device isn’t alway near a socket! I quite like the app too. I particularly like that most of my devices appear sensibly named, not just Mac addresses, and you can see the signal strength and download/upload speeds. All in all, a worthwhile purchase.

Content aside

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