
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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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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I manage around 75 Meraki APs and have been doing so for the last few years so I'm very familiar with them. Most likely the problems you had stemmed from band-steering being enabled. Not likely the fault of the Meraki hardware; your settings probably just weren't properly configured to work best with Apple hardware.
I've been running 3 eeros at home since the day they came out. Apple devices did have some problems with connecting to the eeros for the first few firmware versions (it wasn't a super big deal), but the last few months have been rock solid for me (I'm basically Apple only at home; iPhones, iPads, macOS computers).
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Thanks Cmoo. I did work for an MSP prior to switching over to enterprise IT, and also managed hundreds of Meraki APs. They are great for the most part; but we always had issues with IOS, even with band steering disabled.
Thanks for the info on the Eeros. I have it narrowed down to Eero, Orbi, and Velop. I like the two others due to their dedicated backhaul. How many devices are you running on your 3 Eero setup?
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Hi Commdude —
Thanks for your questions and for your interest in eero! Also, just wanted to say thanks to cMoo92 for stepping in with some great feedback!
Just to clarify, there are no known issues with Apple devices on eero networks. For what it's worth, most of us here use Macbooks and all run eeros at home with no issues.
While eero doesn't have a dedicated backhaul, what eero does have is our own proprietary mesh called TrueMesh. Our mesh is built to quickly optimize your traffic, ensuring you always are seeing the highest speeds at each of your eeros throughout your home. Also, if your house is built for it, eero supports mixed topologies of wired and wireless so you have the option to hardwire some of your eeros while others can continue to mesh with your network wirelessly.
As for the number of devices, each eero can support up to 128 devices.
I hope this helps! If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to reach out!
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Commdude I average 15-20 devices connected at any given time. I never have issues with streaming and I stream a lot from my Plex media server to a couple Apple TVs, and iOS devices. I have a 200Mb internet connection at home and never have a problem maxing it out.
I know the other competing products have dedicated backhaul radios, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with eeros (and eero was intentional about that decision based on their design/testing).
Depending on how much you (or your wife 😉) care about aesthetics, the eero is awesome. They are small (unlike the competition) and look very nice wherever they are placed. I also like how the status LED can be turned off on a per eero basis. I don't know if the competitors can do that, but it's perfect for the eero that's in our master bedroom. Before they released that software option, I had to cover the light on the eero at night.
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Jeff C. I'm surprised to hear you say there are no known issues with Apple devices connecting with Eero. I was just on the phone with your support people (who are very nice by the way) yesterday for the 3rd or 4th time since I purchased my Eero 3 pack last March due to connectivity issues with my Apple devices. Today, I've gone through all the trouble shooting steps and still can't connect my parents iPhone 6's to my network. So frustrating and embarrassing that I can't get my parents on my expensive wifi system. The support person did say that this was a known issue with Apple products and said there was no timeline for a fix. Unfortunately, I cannot return my Eeros because the 30 day return window is up. Do you think this is a hardware issue then if no one else is experiencing Apple connectivity issues with the firmware? I have to manually enter the IP address, etc to connect most of my iOS devices, as they don't connect automatically.
By the way, I have experienced this issue since day one, where only 5 or 7 Apple devices would connnect without having to manually enter IP info.
I want to keep the Eero because it does provide a nice signal (to the devices that will connect) and I love the app but I'm really frustrated at this point. Would love your thoughts.
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Koolmanchu --
Thanks for reaching out. I'm sorry to hear the issues you are encountering, and appreciate your patience as you work with our support team.
As mentioned, there are not any known issues with an iPhone connecting to an eero network. There is no technically limiting reason they shouldn't, so we should take all the necessary steps to ensure what may be causing the issue. Our support team is happy to continue working with you, however, we will need to go through troubleshooting so that if the issue is determined to be on our side, we can get you an exchange as your eeros have a one-year warranty.
In the meantime, I'd also like to suggest that you try some of these tips from Apple, specifically having you reset the network settings on the iPhone. Hopefully your parents don't switch between too many networks, so ideally, they'll only have to sign into your's and their network again. You can find these tips here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204051
I hope this helps. Thanks again for your patience, and we look forward to getting this resolved.
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Jeff C. thanks for the quick response. Typically, I'll go through all these steps and the issue is not resolved. From there, the Eero support person has me enter the IP address, etc manually as the Eero can't do it automatically on some Apple devices. Is this something Eero can address with a firmware fix in the future?
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Koolmanchu --
I'm glad to hear you've gone through those, however, I'm sorry to hear they weren't able to resolve this matter.
I'm going to touch base with our support team once they get in to get a better understanding on what they're seeing on their end.
The solution they provided was to ensure your devices connected in the meantime. However, at the end of the day, I can assure you iPhones and other Apple devices are compatible with eero. Thanks again for your patience. I hope we can find a timely resolution.
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Koolmanchu I know I'm late to the discussion, but if their devices are connecting but not getting internet try reserving the IP. Eero support did it for me a while back for a stubborn connection, and I've since had to do it for all devices that connect regularly (not just iPhones). It's actually why I was on the forums, trying to figure out a real fix.
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I've had the same problem with all of my Apple devices since I got the Eero system. It delivered exactly the opposite of what it promised and has made my WiFi an incredibly frustrating experience. My iPhone and MacBook connect to WiFi, but then cut out a random amount of time later (10 mins - 2 hours). I've tried everything and even brought in Network Consultants but I think my only option might be to ditch these things. My internet is great for 30 minutes but I'm getting sick of toggling my WiFi on/off on my computer all the time. It really kills my workflow.
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Hello again - really late to this thread (just purchased and installed eeros two days ago). So far, our two iPhones and our various iGadgets are all connecting and performing very well.
I gather there was a recent firmware update (released a few weeks ago?) so I can't comment on how the system performed when the thread was started; maybe that helped fix things?
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I am also experiencing iOS issues with multiple devices with my brand new Eero Gen 2 (Pro-Wifi system: 2 eero's wired, 1 wireless). Things seemed fine with firmware 3.1, but since upgrading to 3.2, all of my devices lose connectivity when wandering around my house, and the only way to get it back is to disable then re-enable wifi on the device. I bet it has something to do with this in the 3.2 firmware:
- Improvements to 802.11r FT (fast transition) for Apple iOS devices
There are quite a few people reporting similar issues at https://www.reddit.com/r/eero/
I really want to love Eero, but this issue has been an embarrassment having to explain to my family why this fancy new $500 WiFi system is worse than our old one.
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Hi - what can I do to help replicate and test this? New install of two eeros and four beacons (last Saturday, running the latest firmware) -- using four iOS devices (two phones, two iPads). It's only been a few days but we haven't encountered any drops or issues yet as we wander around the house, basement, and back yard. Thanks!
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Hello again! Cool, thanks to you all for the additional details. I have a similar setup, from my Netgear CM1000 cable modem (owned, not leased) to the first gen2 eero in the basement, to a Linksys 8-port gigabit switch, through CAT5 cable to a second gen2 eero on the main floor. The other side of the basement has an eero beacon, plus one in the main floor Florida room, and two more beacons on the far sides of the upstairs (total of two gen2 eeros and four gen2 beacons, a bit overkill perhaps...).
It's just been since midday Saturday so we will definitely keep tabs on things, for sure. But our iPhones and iPads thus far have not dropped any connections at all, and from what I can tell with the eeros app, they're making good decisions on where to connect (we're on the latest iOS 10, I'm holding off on the iOS 11 public beta although it's so tempting!). I'll continue to check regularly over the next few days, and my wife is particularly sensitive to outages as she streams a lot of podcasts and things (partly why I left the Velop platform for this).
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OK, just replicated this. Here are some stats:
- Device: iPhone 7 iOS 11 beta 5
- Ping from device: Cannot ping gateway (eero) nor outside service (8.8.8.8)
- Websites not loading in Safari (simple test HTTP (not HTTPS) website)
- Cannot access Sonos via app on local network (this is how I detected something was up)
- Physical: Had been using the device in the same room for several hours. Was streaming a video to Apple TV via AirPlay then put device down. After picking it up again to turn on music, issue was experienced.
- Coverage is really good in this area. Using WiFi Explorer on my mac, I have 5GHz SNR of ~45DB from two APs. Those same APs have a SNR of ~60+DB for 2.4 GHz.
Having put down my phone after collecting the above info, I picked up the phone again and everything was fine again... Same room, same position, no manual tweaking of network settings. Downtime was about 2 - 3 minutes. I think I would have run out of patience in this time had I not been testing and would have tried to fix it manually (as I have in the past).
During the outage, everything was perfectly fine on my macOS device. I didn't have a second iOS device handy to check it.
I would have normally chalked this up to iOS 11 beta shenanigans, but given others are seeing this in iOS 10 (including other iOS 10 devices in my house) I think it is not correlative.
Will post more as I learn more details. Keen to hear if others have the same experience with it starting to work again after 120-300 seconds of waiting.
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Just wanted to add my similar experience to the thread.
Currently have one 2nd gen eero and 2 Beacons in a 3800sq ft home. eero gateway is on the 1st floor in the corner of the house, then one Beacon in the basement (central), the other in the master bedroom on the 2nd floor (other side of house). House is rectangle in shape and the gateway has to be placed in one of the corners, with the 2 beacons creating a "V" to the basement and the second floor.
I have experienced the stuck issue as well, as least on my iPhone 7 and iPad Pro (10.5). Running iOS 11 beta 6.
One thing I did try to do was move the master bedroom Beacon further away from the gateway. That did seem to help a little with the issue, but it still happens every once in a while.Issue can be quickly fixed with a toggle of the WiFi, but I'd rather not keep doing that. Just hoping a fix is coming soon. Appreciate people's explanations here.
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Ok, new update and very relevant: the issue has been happening on my iPhone at least once or twice every day, but never on my macOS machine(s). It doesn't seem to be related to roaming, but my APs are close enough that my phone may be opportunistically transitioning.
Today I managed to capture the issue and connect my iPhone to my Mac and start a packet capture on the rvi0 interface (the virtual interface of the iPhone) via WireShark while the problem was ongoing.
I have been doing this type of analysis for years, and I have never before seen this behavior: there was no activity on the interface! Even though new requests were seemingly being made on the device (DNS, Pings, HTTP requests, etc.) nothing* was appearing on the wire! (* There were some unidentifiable payloads that were being egressed, possibly for 802.11r protocol communications, but they were not readable by WireShark. Will probably look into this more later.)
This seems to indicate that something about the Eero's handling of the WiFi connection is bricking the network interface. Of course, this could very well be (and probably is) an iOS bug triggered by hero's implementation (a 3rd party AP should not be able to brick an OS's network stack) since it only appears to impact iOS devices.
If I had to venture a guess, I would bet this has to do with the Eero's 3.2 firmware 802.11r FT improvements which were specifically targeting iOS devices.
I snapped a sysdiagnose on my phone while this was happening and I'll spend some time analyzing some of the networking stack debug log output. I'll likely file a bug with Apple as well and will pass along to rdar for Eero engineers to follow up on.
As expected, disabling and re-enabling WiFi resulted in an immediate flood of expected traffic in the Wireshark capture and everything was working fine again.
Jeff C. FYI!! ^^^
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For those experiencing issues with iOS 11 beta:
Thank you for reporting this matter. This is something we are looking into.
If you are experiencing this issue with either iOS 11 beta or the current production version of iOS (10.3.3) and haven't yet contacted eero support, please email us at support@eero.com so we can continue to look into the matter.
Thank you, and we will update this thread as soon as we have more details to pass along.
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Count another one in.
I just replaced my Netgear Nighthawk X6 with a pack of 2nd gen Eero's and have had multiple problems that I never experienced in 2 years with the Netgear.
All iOS devices and all the same behaviours described in this thread. Random disconnects, lots of times I have "full bars" but Safari kicks back the "You're not connected" error and yet my wife's sitting right next to mine working fine. Usually after that happens about 5 seconds later boop, I lose wifi all together. It takes iOS another 30 seconds to reconnect to wifi at which point it's fine. All until it randomly happens again. I setup the Eero's last night (18 hours ago) and it's already happened 3 times.
This is in a 2500sqft home that I mean honestly, the Nighthawk had no problems with I just wanted to "get something better" and the Eero's are centrally located on each floor.
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I managed to replicate this problem yesterday (it continues to be daily) and the device stayed in the locked out state for over an hour left undisturbed. This is running the latest iOS 11 beta 7. Switching the network to the guest network fixed the problem, but other things like DHCP renews and any amount of network activity made no difference until that point.
Some more analysis of the detailed captures definitely point to the broadcom chip hanging and crashing multiple times within that hour, but not coming back up as I would have expected.
At this point, I am well beyond my depth but it definitely appears to be some sort of interoperability issue between iOS, eero, and/or broadcom. Since this same phone works great all day on my office WiFi network as well as my past Netgear, I think it is safe to assume that something eero is doing is triggering the faults.
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Since iOS 10.3.3 and Eero Gen 1 Firmware 3.2.1-2, I am experiencing numerous WiFi dropouts and general WiFi stalls. According to Eero support, this is a known issue. I have had the Eero Gen 1 woth 3 access points for almost a year and it has provided much better coverage and speed throughout my home than my previous Apple AirPort Extreme 5th Gen but it has also had some quirks with iOS devices that is causing me to think about trying another solution. Such quirks have included Apple Continuity and Handoff features (including Apple Watch unlock of Mac) between iOS devices and my Macs not working (has to do with devices being connected to different eero Access Points, which a user generally has no easy control over) and now this issue, which is likely due to the Broadcom update included in iOS 10.3.3 and how it interacts with the Eeros. It's been enough of a hassle to make me consider something else.
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To be fair, I bet this problem is happening for any mesh Wi-Fi network provider that is trying to take advantage of iOS's 802.11r FT capabilities. Everything I am seeing points to a bad code update in iOS 10.3.3 that is breaking the broadcom firmware.
I have filed a ticket with Apple: rdar://34074507 and I'll report back if anything helpful comes through.