0Powerline Adapters Backhaul
Hello!
First, I love the Eero and their performance (particularly with the latest release). I don't want to be a network engineer at home, I want to be the lazy user :)
I do have a question on optimizing the backhaul. I have an old house with lots of stone and no crawl space - running cable even the 60 ft between the dining room (Eero 1) and the Family room (Eero 2) would not be something I want to take on myself, or really pay someone to do at this time.
What about powerline between the two? In other words, get adapters so the two communicate that way vs. wifi (and freeing up the wifi antennas)? While I think in THEORY this would be better (assuming Eero supports this), I have old wiring as well and I'd expect dropped packets or other issues potentially.
Has anyone tried this or have Powerline adapters connecting the Eeros together? I'd be curious about your experience doing so.
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Hi DisagreeableDad – thanks for the post, and welcome to the eero community!
I'm glad to hear that your eero experience is going well.
We have many users who use power line adapters without any issue. In fact, we have recommended it to many users in environments similar to yours.
Introducing power line adapters should improve throughput on your LAN in general. Additionally, you will have the option of connecting some of your ethernet devices via power line to increase their throughput.
I hope this was helpful! Feel free to follow up here if you have any more questions.
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I would be careful if you are thinking about "bridging" - I just installed my eero 3 pack this past Sunday. Two of my eeros were hard wired - my "main" eero (via ethernet) and an "office" eero (via powerline/ethernet). They kept cycling between offline and connected - my other one stayed online for some reason. I contacted support (very responsive - thankyou!!!) and they acknowledged some sort of issue with bridging that was affecting some customers. They are working on a patch for this but recommended I stop using bridge mode for now. Unfortunately my setup kinda requires it - I manage my own firewall and several different subnets etc etc. Instead I unplugged the powerline (office) eero and let it mesh wirelessly and things started working!
So far I am mostly happy - I know this is a constantly improving product and am prepared to put up with minor issues here and there. Would really like greater control/more info etc over the setup but assume that's coming. We do get great signal around the house, speed seems decent - can stream without stuttering - we'll see once the relatives come to town for the holidays! I am still eager to put the powerline connection back in place as soon as things get sorted out. I've read that wired backhaul is potentially faster/more reliable than wireless. It's very cool that eero handles both.
Should be noted that I have installed 2 other 3 pack eero systems - one for a client and one for my uncle. Both had powerline connections for one of the secondary eeros. Both installations are not bridged and have experienced great coverage and speeds and no issues as far as I know.
