Eero iPhone Connectivity Issues
Hello,
I have not yet purchased an Eero system yet; I am in the research stages deciding between Google Wifi, Orbi, Luma, Unify mesh, Amplifi, and Velop.
I have seen many reviews and threads in forums in regards to Apple IOS devices failing to 'roam' between APs, or randomly dropping connections, or staying connected to the furthest AP rather than switching to the closest one.
A couple years back I set up a $1000 Cisco Meraki AP for my home network. After countless issue with our iPhones and iPads not being able to connect, not seeing the SSIDs, and randomly dropping connections I switched back to my $100 Asus router, which has superior performance (for Apple devices) to the enterprise grade AP. I am looking for a modern WiFi solution to power all of our devices, including many Apple devices.
In any case, it seams Apple devices always have issues with WiFi, I am looking for a solid solution to this, I thought Eero was the winner until I started reading it also has the same issues with Apple. I have read that people have open cases with Eero regarding this, but it's still a known issue.
At my office we have a ton of Enterprise Cisco APs, in which iPhones can seamlessly roam between without loosing a video call. Obviously at the price point of Eero we cannot expect enterprise grade features, but I am looking for some input if others are having this issue with their iPhones on Eero, and what support / development teams are doing to solve this issue?
One other item of interest is outdoor WiFi coverage. With other mesh WiFi options on the market; outdoor weather resistant APs are offered. Does Eero have any intentions or future plans to offer the addition of outdoor APs to the mesh network?
Thanks in advance.
252 replies
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My guess is that a lot of people are having this issue but are attributing it to various other things like a bad modem, ISP outages, too many people sharing a cable connection, apps crashing, old iPhone, people in the house streaming video, etc... No one in my house(four more adults) has complained and we all use iOS devices. Today I tested all of the phones and they all have the same issue.
I think we’re the people who notice, mind, and evaluate. I think people might be more inclined to notice if they had speedy, rock-solid internet all the time. I think we’re all used to shoddy WiFi. I work at a tech company and wrestle with WiFi all day, switching networks, moving closer to APs when I need speed...
But hey for three or four glorious days when I first installed the eero system, I had a taste of what things could be like... Hoping to get there again. Thanks everyone.
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Anyone having problems connecting to a MacBook Pro running OS 10.13 Beta (17A360a)? I just returned from a two week trip out of town and now my MacBook will not connect to the network. It times out and tells me the password is incorrect which I know is connect.
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I'm seeing connection (moving from eeros and after sleeping) issues with my iPad after upgrading to iOS 11. This iPad had no connection problems when running iOS 10. Other iPads and iPhones that haven't upgraded aren't experiencing any issues. My MacBookAir has connection issues from time to time but other MacBook devices don't seem to be having this issue. I originally bought a 3 pack years ago and had lots of problems from the get-go. I ended up replacing two of my eeros and my router, but I had been cruising without large problems for at least 9 months.
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Jeff C. & weaves I am having this issue have been watching this thread for awhile now. Rather than post here though I have been working directly with support, which has been a pretty slow and somewhat disorganized process. I am thinking now that it is probably worthwhile to document here what is going on there, so that everyone is on the same page and hopefully we can inject some efficiency into the process.
Basic facts:
- I have an eero 3 pack, series 1 purchased during the initial crowdfunding campaign.
- Eeros have been on the network for around 2 years and have been working well up until about 6 weeks ago.
- Eeros are all hardwired using CAT 6.
- Eeros all running 3.4. The issue seems to have started on 3.3. After switching to 3.4 there was a slight improvement in that the connection failed over to LTE more elegantly.
- Eeros are distributed around a 3 floor (counting basement) 2800 sq ft house as such:
- Eero 1: Dmarc: In basement northern side of house
- Eero 2: Office: Main floor southern side of house
- Eero 3: Living room: Main floor: northern side of house
- There are no eeros on the top floor of the house, which is where the bedroom is, there is strong signal up there though.
- Problem occurs when I move around the house. Seems to be tied to the phone switching APs based on location.
- I can easily repro the issue by walking upstairs to the bedroom.
- I have provided detailed info to support including MAC addresses and exact timing of the issue and toggling wifi on and off.
- Support used the info provided and has responded with a theory that seems a bit off. They stated:
I think the confusion may have arisen due to a potential overlap in signals from your Living room eero and your Dmarc eero. If there's a large enough overlap, your phone may realize there's another eero with a slightly better signal, but once it connects to it, it realizes that the original eero has slightly better signal and hops back. This transition is where I believe the breakdown in communication is stemming from.
I think this is unlikely because the eeros he mentioned are very far from one another. They are on completely different floors, it seems odd to me that the system would get confused by the signal strength of an eero 2 floors away and one 1 floor away. Further, there has been no change to my eero placement in over a year and this problem is quite recent. - I pointed this all out to support and they had me reset my network settings on my phone. I did that and confirmed that the problem still exists. I gave them the details of that failure and that is where we have left off.
- I have mentioned the existence of and linked to this thread multiple times in the support process.
I'm very interested in getting this issue resolved and am willing to help out in any way necessary. So far I feel that the back and forth with support has been a little slow and somewhat disorganized, which is a little bit frustrating. What I hope you can do Jeff C. and weaves is possibly look into my tickets and see if you can get them escalated or get a bit more visibility on them. As I said I am more than willing to assist your team in digging into this, but I would like to see a more concerted effort from support to keep the ball moving forward.
Thanks and let me know if you have any questions,
Chris
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Also surprised to hear there are "no known connectivity issues for apple products". I've had issues since opening the box over a year ago with all my devices (phones and ipads) randomly dropping connection, losing connectivity, despite strong signal all over. I have to frequently turn off my wifi and turn back on to regain connection, especially after moving around the house where I am assuming it does a handoff.
The other major issue is connection to other devices s/a chromecast where you are streaming from your phone. The connection may discover your device at first, allow you to start streaming, then when you go back in to pause or stop it can't find it. I can only solve by turning on and off my wifi on my phone until it finds the connection again. I am assuming here the devices get connected to different hubs and aren't talking to each other properly.
Also was very bummed to lose wifi connection to my printer making it an expensive obsolete piece of tech that the Eero network didn't support.
This is all a deal-breaker. I can't imagine others aren't seeing these same issues.
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All: I received the iPhone 8 yesterday. Up until then I had issues with getting higher speeds and connecting to the 5GHz band. It may be coincidental, but the speeds have been much better when using the 8. Not sure what the difference might be.
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In case there was any question about Eero's commitment to resolving this issue, I think that can be put to rest: I just wrapped up an in-house visit by Eero's CEO and CTO (or a Saturday) during which we worked on this issue.
They brought some network monitoring kit and we coordinated with an engineer back at the office to synchronize network L2 packet captures and on-device logging. Murphy was in full effect for the first 40 minutes, but eventually we were able to reproduce the issue and they saw it with their own eyes. We had good captures that their engineering team will be able to analyze and share with Apple.
In those first 40 minutes, I got to dig into what is going on and how they are handling this incident. It is clear they are very aware of the problem and have committed much of their engineering resources to solve it. As we had predicted in this thread, the leading theory is that this is a result of 802.11r FT (fast transition), which I have come to learn is one of those fairly loosely defined standards. It turns out eero is really trying to get this to work, but there are issues with interoperability. To that end, Apple may be just as much to blame for problems given their implementation of FT on iOS.
I also learned that with FT, the device will attempt to re-associate/authenticate with the network far more frequently than when it is disabled, even when the device is not physically moving. Since eeros have multiple radios (2 per beacon) the device will actually negotiate a handoff between 2.4GHz and 5GHz intra-beacon/AP. If that doesn't work right (e.g. fails to "roam" from one radio to the other), then you end up disconnected. The issue is compounded if you are in an area with overlapping beacon/AP coverage.
The eero team seems very committed to getting FT working, whereas they claim other mesh vendors appear to have given up on it. That is a tough call: eero wants to build a next-generation home Wi-Fi network which involves trailblazing some pretty uncharted territory, creating some aggravated customers and poor product perception in the process.
I think the bottom line is that if eero were not a startup with people that are clearly scrappy and hungry to build a successful business and killer product, I would cut my losses now. However, my read of these guys is that they have the grit to figure it out, it is only a matter of when they nail it.
Personally I am energized to help them out as I – along with everyone else on this thread – have an opportunity to be part of this innovation. That said, they do have to think about what to do for those that run into problems and don't share my/our same enthusiasm and will return the product instead.
Next steps: today's capture should help a lot with helping to diagnose what is going on and I'm sure there will be another software update in time. As a community, let's keep providing feedback and hopefully they resolve this issue for good sooner than later.
Content aside
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