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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

    • frustratedinseattle
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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.

      • cMoo92
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      frustratedinseattle 

      1. Have you talked to support? 
      2. Have you tried adding an IP reservation for your devices that are experiencing issues? This worked for me several months ago when I was having issues.
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    • stevebaker
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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?

    • afx114
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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.

      • mattv123
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      afx114 +1 same exact issue. Only appears to be impacting iOS devices. 

    • Jason.1
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I'm having issues where I'm not consistently getting correct speeds on the 5 Ghz band.  The issue is currently with support/engineering.

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    • stevebaker
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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!

      • afx114
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      stevebaker I'm not sure.  All I can do is provide my setup and say that it happens when moving around the house.

      I have the Gen 2 Pro WiFi system (3 Eeros), connected like so:

      Arris SB6183 => (Wired) Eero => (Wired) TP-Link TL-SG108E Gigabit Switch => (Wired) Eero => (Wireless) Eero

      • All wired connections are CAT6.
      • The Modem/Eero/Switch are in the basement.
      • The 2nd Eero is upstairs in the bedroom, wired to the switch in the basement.  
      • The 3rd Eero is in the detached garage in the back yard (wireless). It shows full bars but I'm not sure if it's connected to the basement or bedroom Eero.  I'm going to guess basement since it is closer. (Would be nice if the app showed which Eeros were connected to which!)

      Software versions:

      • All Eeros are on the latest firmware (v3.2.1-2)
      • All iOS devices are on the latest iOS (10.3.3)

      I'm not sure what other info I can provide.  Please let me know if there's anything else that would be helpful.

      Note that I have started an experiment.  I had originally used the same SSID as my old router (ASUS AC1900), but new password.  I read that using the same SSID could be problematic, so I've just changed it today.  I'll run on this a few days and let you know how it goes.

      • mattv123
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      stevebaker I have the 2nd gen 3-tpack (one pro, 2 beacons).  I think the issue may be related to the APs being close enough together, but not quite far enough to warrant a hand off.  I've moved them around physically to see if that would make a difference. 

      Otherwise, replication steps is to put your device on Wi-Fi and after some period of time (likely between the device sleeping and becoming active again a few times) observe that stuff is just broken.

      Next time it happens, I'll try more diagnostic debugging like pings, DNS queries, etc. and will report.

      • afx114
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      An update on my little experiment of changing the SSID.  I thought it had worked, because I had no issues with WiFi last night.  But this morning when I picked up my phone -- no WiFi!  Safari sat there spinning, then all of a sudden WiFi disconnected completely, leaving me on 4G.  I had never seen that before.  In the past I would stay on WiFi, but it just had no connectivity.  This time was different, it was as if my Eero's were completely gone.  Toggling my WiFi on/off fixed it as usual.

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    • stevebaker
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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).

      • Dklane012
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      stevebaker I'll be interested in your experience.  I just got the eero yesterday after 8 months with Google WiFi and a couple weeks with Velop.  I have bridge mode on, 3 floors, lots of devices. Several iOS devices. Fiber internet, so it has to be bridge mode, PPPoE connection. 

      Wi-Fi calls from T-Mobile drop when switching APs, that is all I have seen so far.  Otherwise, this seems to be faster than the Velop and a lot less latency.  

      These have provided the best wireless speeds I've seen yet.  I got a 1st Gen system cheap due to clearing them out, I assume.

      Liking it so far.

    • mattv123
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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.

      • mattv123
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      mattv123 OK, happened again.  This time something very interesting happened:

      I was running a ping to the local Eero gateway address (192.168.150.1) on my iPhone and all of the pings were not responding.  I popped open my laptop and in that moment all of the pings responded omniscience's my iPhone!  The response times were 55000ms+ (that is how long I was running pings), but they all came back.  This means that none of the ICMP pings were lost, but they were stuck.

      Now, the question is: did opening my laptop and connecting to the network unblock whatever was going on with the access point?  Note that in my message yesterday, the same thing happened when I opened up my laptop to take notes... Could be coincidence, but I am going to test this case more directly the next time it happens.

      I'll also try using rvi0 on my iPhone to my Mac (with WiFi off) to see if I can track the behavior on the interface.

      • mattv123
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      mattv123 damn you autocorrect! *Pings came in all at once

    • adammiarka
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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.   

      • Gravity Brings Me Down...
      • stevebaker
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Sorry you're having issues too! My network is not in bridged mode, and we're not running the iOS 11 beta, and we have six eero or beacon units in a ~1600 sq.ft. house. I wonder which of those factors is driving the issue? We are still doing fine, with no noticeable issues or problems on our iDevices.

      • adammiarka
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      stevebaker I think spacing out the Beacons has helped.   eero app still indicates a good signal between the Beacons and the gateway.

      Despite the specific issue with iOS devcies, eero is the most responsive and reliable network that we've had in the house.  30+ devices connected at any time.

    • jansink
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Same issues here. 2nd gen Eero, one base and two beacons. iPhone 7 on IOS 11 beta 5 and iPhone 6 on latest IOS 10. Loosing WiFi connections or getting very low speeds when moving through our home.

    • mattv123
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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!! ^^^

      • mattv123
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      mattv123 Analyzing sysdiagnose logs:

      Around the time of failure, there are a bunch of console errors indicating: 

      165661.719785 wlan0.A[28576] startEventScan@444:Error sending event scan request: BCOM Busy

      Clearly the "wlan0" is referring to the wireless LAN.  Assuming BCOM = Broadcom WiFi chipset

      At times preceding these errors, it looks like there is a trap triggered in the Broadcom chip and then a watchdog comes around and reloads the firmware for it. 

      default    2017-08-19 12:16:30.161222 -0700    kernel    163642.801070 wlan0.A[28436] parseEventLogRecords@11349:Failed to parse Event Log Record tag 60 at i 152, payloadLen 20    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.261224 -0700    kernel    163643.901083 wlan0.A[28437] interruptPCIeMSI_v6@9454:FAILED HEALTH CHECK (0x3000000b)    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.261505 -0700    kernel    163643.901471 wlan0.A[28438] handleFWTrap@9327:FW TRAP 132 (1c3b78): epc 1862d5, pc 1862d5, lr 1a162d, sp 1c3bd0, cpsr 60000193, spsr 60000033    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.261682 -0700    kernel    163643.901652 wlan0.A[28439] handleFWTrap@9329:r0 1, r1 1a162d, r2 1c18a4, r3 0, r4 1862d5, r5 1, r6 1862d5    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.261847 -0700    kernel    163643.901819 wlan0.A[28440] handleFWTrap@9331:r7 1, r8 18001000, r9 1c3c34, r10 0, r11 0, r12 0    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.269815 -0700    kernel    163643.909778 wlan0.A[28441] watchdog@23578: <1ad85a> state 0x30005 watchdog@BCMWLAN Chip Trap~Type=132,PC=0x1862D5,LR=0x1A162D    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.274987 -0700    kernel    163643.914894 wlan0.E[28442] reportCompletedTxCommands@1122: Command for completion 0x26a47c386bd12cb7 (status success) not in Outbound queue, dropping.    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.276528 -0700    kernel    163643.916490 wlan0.E[28443] enqueueRxCommands@1207: Command response unexpected:  37649) 0x26a47c3890685b37 [ cmd 0x00000106 len 0x000007D4 flags 0x0893110000 status 0x00000000 "success"]    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.277797 -0700    kernel    163643.917765 wlan0.A[28444] enqueueRxCommands@1213: Failed to trigger WD, "device is busy"    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.376696 -0700    kernel    163644.016659 wlan0.A[28445] getTCPAliveOffloadWakeReason@555:Getting TCP Keep Alive Status failed    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.376877 -0700    kernel    163644.016847 wlan0.A[28446] unConfigureKeepAlives@763:Failed to get TKO Wake Reason with err: BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.377051 -0700    kernel    163644.017021 wlan0.A[28447] setTCPAliveOffloadEnable@526:Configuring TCP Keep Alive Enable/ failed    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.377215 -0700    kernel    163644.017187 wlan0.A[28448] unConfigureKeepAlives@768:Failed to disable TKO with err: BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.377378 -0700    kernel    163644.017352 wlan0.A[28449] unConfigureKeepAlives@793:Failed to UnConfigure mkeep-alive for ID 1    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.377537 -0700    kernel    163644.017512 wlan0.A[28450] unConfigureKeepAlives@793:Failed to UnConfigure mkeep-alive for ID 2    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.377722 -0700    kernel    163644.017692 wlan0.A[28451] configureActivePortsInToChip@26041:Failed to configure Packet Port List : BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.377888 -0700    kernel    163644.017864 wlan0.A[28452] resetPorts@27639:Failed to configure Active Ports    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.378047 -0700    kernel    163644.018021 wlan0.A[28453] configureARPOffload@26575: Unable to Disable ARP filtering: BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.378216 -0700    kernel    163644.018186 wlan0.A[28454] clearHostIPv6TableForNeighbourDiscovery@26830: Failed to Clear IPV6 addresses from to IPV6 Table BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.378431 -0700    kernel    163644.018401 wlan0.A[28455] configureNeighbourDiscovery@26764: Failure to Disable Neighbour Discovery: BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.378605 -0700    kernel    163644.018575 wlan0.A[28456] configureMulticastBroadcastWaitPeriod@27729: Failed configuring pm_bcmc_moredata_wait: BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.378775 -0700    kernel    163644.018746 wlan0.A[28457] configureMulticastBroadcastWaitPeriod@27736:LPAS: Ignore Multicast/Broadcast failed    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.378943 -0700    kernel    163644.018913 wlan0.A[28458] configureLPASMode@27684: Failure to configure LPAS in FW: BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.379107 -0700    kernel    163644.019081 wlan0.A[28459] resetLinkParams@21567: Unable to turn off Link Up filtering BCMWLAN Cmdr Disabled    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.634807 -0700    kernel    163644.274645 wlan0.A[28460] loadImage@3757:Image: 0 [ 0< FIRMWARE{640520} >640520 |  pad  | 640640< NVRAM_PROVISIONED{26} >640666 | 640666< NVRAM{5174} >645840 | pad ] 655134    0
default    2017-08-19 12:16:31.635025 -0700    kernel    163644.274988 wlan0.A[28461] loadImage@3780:Chip RAM: 0 [ 0< firmware{640520} >640520 | 640520 ~ 640520< free{271776} >912296 | 912296< nvram{5200} >917496 | 917504 ~ pad | 917500 @0xfaea0515 ] 917504    0

      I believe all of this happened while the phone was in my pocket. I didn't notice problems until about 30 minutes later.  It is a bit unclear if the phone was dead during this whole time, or only when I started using it. 

      Some of the other errors I am seeing that is indicative of something really messed up is stuff like this: 

      default    2017-08-19 12:52:40.228997 -0700    symptomsd    L2 Metrics on ifname en0: rssi: -75 (txFrames/txReTx/txFail) 0/0/0 -> (was/is) 0/0    4626
mDNSPlatformSendUDP: sendto(49) failed to send packet on InterfaceID 0000000000000008   en0/4 to 75.7.75.75:53 skt 49 error -1 errno 0 (Undefined error: 0) 1516951940 MessageCount is 5

      Next time it happens, I'll take another snapshot and compare behaviors (specifically if the trap is experienced before the outage or if that is a red herring)

    • eero Community Manager
    • Jeff_C
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Official response
    • Reported - view

    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.

      • bdplatt
      • 7 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Jeff C. eMail sent. Noting wifi dropout issues with 2 IOS 11 devices whenever I walk through the house. Eero loses connection (or throughput), Eero app says the device in question is still connected to an Eero where I was a couple of minutes ago, instead of the one in the room I'm in now.

    • travisbell
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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.

    • mattv123
    • 7 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    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. 

Content aside

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