
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.
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I have 5 eeros all connected via ethernet and am having the same problems as everyone else. My iOS devices (I don't have other ones to try) all disconnect if I move around my house and I'm forced to toggle airplane mode on/off to get the connection back. This is really annoying after paying a premium for a consumer network product. I hope this can be fixed soon.
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Not to dog pile, but hoping being an additional use case is seen as helpful to finding a solution.
I have three Eeros (the 3pk Pro kit). The Gateway is connected to a 2nd via ethernet and a 3rd wirelessly.
My experience with this issue is limited to my iPhone 7 running iOS11. But it does happen regularly and I can easily reproduce it.
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To anyone reading this thread who hasn't contributed or followed yet: please do add a comment indicating you are having a problem too. Take 2 minutes to write what eero set up you have (3pk Pro, 2nd gen beacons etc), and the types of devices that are having problems.
We need to help eero validate that this is a problem impacting more than just a small subset of their customers (if that is in fact the case) so they can address this problem full on.
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Just updated to iOS 11 on my iPhone 7 Plus with no difference in the issue. I still will get either a completely disconnected wifi or a wifi with no connectivity when I move through my home. Toggling wifi on and off will fix the issue but that's not a workable solution obviously. I rely heavily on wifi calling since Verizon does not have strong service at my home. Currently using 4 First Gen Eero's all wired with Ethernet running the latest release firmware.
This also affects my iPad Pro 12.9 and iPad Pro 9.7" as well as my wife's iPhone 7
I just bought some UniFi AP's since I read they do not have this issue. I put in Eero's at all my co-workers home (I'm CTO for a PE firm) and they to are having the same issue. At this point if the UniFI AP's work at my home I'm going to have to remove all the Eero's we have deployed (one home has 10 of them) and switch to UniFi. I will no longer be able to recommend Eero's to all those that look for me for guidance.
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I am running the test build of version 3.4.0, but unfortunately it has not solved the roaming issue for me. I replied to support with a report, but for the benefit of others I'm posting here as well.
I only notice the roaming issue on my iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 11, not any MacBooks or iPads, but possibly that's because it's the only device I carry with me and use frequently in different areas of my home. The other devices are more stationary. My iPhone seems to "stick" with the previous eero when I move around, staying connected much longer than it should, and it doesn't switch to a closer eero until I toggle WiFi off and on again (as many others have noted). After toggling, my WiFi connection works again and speeds are as expected.
I have no other WiFi networks or routers on my network, only eeros. I've tried testing with as few as two wired eeros (2nd generation) around my home and as many as seven (including three beacons and two first gen eeros, the latter also being wired), but it happens in all configurations. The eeros are all wired to an unmanaged gigabit switch.
Previously, I had two Linksys wireless routers (WRT1900AC and WRT1200AC) and one TP-Link wireless router, all wired via gigabit Ethernet and using the same SSID, using both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, with non-overlapping channels in each band. This worked great, and I never experienced roaming issues like this. The only real trouble was that I had poor signal in my garage, where I don't have Ethernet, and in my back yard. The eero beacons solved those problems, but the roaming issue is more troublesome on a day-to-day basis. I spent quite a lot of money setting this new network up over the past week, so I really hope this can be resolved soon.
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Hi! I’m also running the beta firmware across my six-eero setup (two main and four beacon) and occasionally encounter the issue with my iPhone 7+ on iOS 11.
I’ll check if my iPad Pro (also on iOS 11) has the issue to any noticeable degree. My wife’s iPhone 6s (still on 10.latest) has no issues, pretty interesting about that.
We’ve come from the Linksys Velop system (ugh) and before that a hodgepodge setup of routers linked together. Eeros is by far the best of all that, so I’m holding tight.
This weekend I will focus on some tests with that nifty WiFi Sweet Spot app, and will use the iOS 11 screen recording feature to capture every moment!
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Hi everyone —
We greatly appreciate those who have reached out and helped test our recent 3.4 build. While we’re happy to hear that this update has resolved the reported issue for some, we understand that others are continuing to experience the same issue on certain devices. The feedback we’ve received thus far has been invaluable toward our debugging efforts; please continue to share feedback with us at support@eero.com .
Our mesh team is working on getting to a solution that fixes the issue more broadly. We can’t thank you enough for your patience and understanding. We’ll be sure to post updates regularly, as well as share next steps for future test builds.
Thanks again.
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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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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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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.
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Hi everyone —
Thanks for your patience and support as our team has continued work on this matter throughout the weekend.
Starting tonight, we will be releasing an update to all networks that will provide improvements to roaming. This will come in the form of a cloud-based change to the backend of eero networks (no new firmware), and there is no action needed on your end. This will be a rolling update to networks. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
Your feedback is invaluable. We ask that you continue to use your devices as normal. If you continue to see the same issues, please email support@eero.com. This will allow our team to efficiently track and report any feedback back to engineering.
Thanks again.
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Update from my end: the eero team disabled FT on my network yesterday around 4pm PST (about 26 hours ago) and since then I have had a 0% failure rate. Literally not a single drop. So the problem is clearly with FT, or something related to whatever was turned off.
rtlee You said you have FT disabled on your network as well. Did this resolve the issue for you as well?
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I logged a support ticket a few days ago with this problem and requested the 3.4.0 test build firmware which I got pushed to me yesterday. Now, as of tonight, my iPhone 7 Plus (iOS 11.0) internet connections no longer seem to be hanging.
I have been walking through the house with streaming audio in the background, running speed tests with Wi-Fi Sweetspots and Ookla Speedest with excellent connection speeds and throughput everywhere. Looking at which eero BSSID I'm connected to with Net Analyzer I now see smooth handoffs between my 4 eeros as I walk from room to room, mostly switching between the 5GHz BSSID networks.
I saw only one quick drop to LTE for a couple of seconds before reconnecting back to wifi when I was in a closet furthest between two eeros with most walls in between. Also, in one room with the relatively weakest signal strength, the phone switched to the closest eero's 2.4GHz BSSID and hung onto that eero at 2.4GHz throughout the house, slowing speed tests down, but still staying connected. At some point it got back on to 5GHz where it's stayed all night.
So, looking really promising now. Seeing no issues on MacBook Air (El Cap) or MacBook Pro TouchBar (Sierra) either, when walking around both are switching at -75dBm to a closer AP.
Thanks eero team for working the problem. :thumbsup:
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So somehow the threading of responses led to me missing the official response from Jeff C. and asking unnecessary questions. The solution doesn’t come from a firmware update but via a cloud based eero setting so individual users don’t need to do anything.
I can confirm that for the last 5 hours, I’ve had no drops. That’s a huge change as my connection was dropping every few seconds. I hope this is it- have had previous brief moments of stability.
Many thanks for the work on this update.
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Well, I had a typical lock-up this morning around 7:58am PDT. It's the same symptoms:
1. I move from one side of the house to the other.
2. The Wifi indicator shows a weakened signal, even though I'm a few yards from an eero
3. Indicator switches to LTE, then to full-strength WiFi.
4. Internet connection dead. Toggling off/on restores connection
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For the most part things are better. I've had only a couple of instances where the eero app would show that it couldn't connect to the internet, but resolved itself within half a minute. But majority (90%) of the time it transitions from one eero node to another. My three eero pro (2nd gen) are hardwired.
On another note, Apple just released an update to iOS 11...11.0.1. They only state it fixes bugs. So here's to the update helping with FT and battery life on iOS 11!!
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I didn't ever have the issues with my iPhones getting disconnected as others, but frequently had slow speeds on the 5 GHz band. I'm not sure if it's the fact I've moved to the iPhone 8 or the changes, but the better speeds are much more consistent. Two Questions: What speed should I realistically get on my iPhone I'm currently seeing 180-200 megs down, and 150 up? My connection is 1 Gig Symmetrical Fiber Circuit. Interestingly the router's speed test on the WAN only registers 800/300 megs, but the ISP has certified that 1 Gig is being delivered.