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I am having issues with ssh (or scp) between OSX devices, only on my eero network

I have three macbook pro devices.  2008 model on 10.11.6, 2015 on 10.13.6, and new 2019 on 10.14.6.

While trying to setup the newest device I wanted to scp files from the 2015 to the 2019.  But I couldn't get scp or ssh to work on my home eero network not mater what I tried.

So I tried at work and they connect just fine.

More testing on home network finds that this seems to be an eero issue.  I have a second network at home (independent network with it's own external WAN IP).  It's on a zyxel router and connecting to that device works fine.  I can ssh between any of these devices.

Once I return them to the eero network they start failing again.

I also find they can't ping each other.

Each Mac can see the rest of my network.  I have several Raspberry Pi devices.  Each can be seen, each can be pinged and I can ssh to any of them from any of my OSX macbooks.  I can even ssh from one mac to the other if I go through any of the pi devices.   SSH to PI and then SSH any of the other macs.   No problem.  I can also ping the macbooks from any of the pi devices.

So for some reason my eero network is causing issues for peer to peer connections between OSX devices specifically. 

I can ssh from any pi to any other pi as well.  So it is a OSX specific issue.  

Actually it seems to be an apple specific issue.  Because I have a terminal app on my iphone which lets me ssh.  I can ssh into any pi, but once again I can NOT ssh into my macbooks from my iphone.

I have heard about issues with Apple devices on eero network but they mostly involve issues with connecting to a closer (stronger signal) eero or loss of connection when you roam.  I have this issue as well with my iphones, macbooks and ipads.   But a simple wifi off/wifi on fixes this issue.  I can't find a solution to fix my ability to ssh (or more specifically scp) from one macbook to another on an eero network.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Is there a solution?

16 replies

    • cMoo92
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    That’s a pretty strange issue. I just checked and I have no issue with pinging or SSH between macOS and/or iOS devices on my eero network.

      • ron_g
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      cMoo92 Isn't it strange.  I have contacted support.  No response yet.  I also reached out to folks over on reddit r/eero and an eero dev there helped me debug a bit.  She acknowledges that there is a layer in the system keeping track of what devices can communicate with the network in order to provide the profile support they have.  She suggested perhaps there is a bug at that layer or something similar.  So not as strange as it initially seems.

      I had a moment where the ssh started working again yesterday.  No changes made it just started working.  Then hours later I tried again and the problem is back.  I can join several other non-eero networks I have access to and the problem goes away so I am pretty sure the issue isn't with the machines themselves.

      • ron_g
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      cMoo92 Forgot to say thanks for testing that for me.  I was wondering if it worked for anyone else.  Good to know it can work.  Do you have Gen 1 or Gen 2 eero?  I have the older Gen1 system so wondering if that is a factor.

      • cMoo92
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      ron_g my gateway eero is a gen 2, but I also have one beacon and two gen 1 units. One “disclaimer” is that I am part of the beta program, so I’m running a different eero OS version than you would be (unless you’re also in the beta). So it’s technically possibly the issue you’re experiencing isn’t present in the current beta.

    • miwi
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Hi there, did you solve your problem. Same issue here.

      • ron_g
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      miwi unfortunately no never solved. It was a short term need for me so I just double natted and old router and connected the two macs to that network while I transferred files between them. Eero support was not able to solve or understand what was happening. On reddit an eero developer explained that it could be a bug in the software that is there to provide the profile features they have on eero network. She mentioned that layer has code that determines what devices are allowed to talk to each other. I don’t use profiles but you can’t turn them off so even when not using them the code is still processing. I would suggest you contact support so they get more reports about this issue. Here is the thread on the topic of you want to read through it. https://www.reddit.com/r/eero/comments/cob4aj/i_cant_ssh_from_one_macbook_to_another_but_can/

    • miwi
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Hi ron. Thanks for the quick reply. I’ll contact to see if they have a solution now. Just activated my old airport and I immediately got my macs connected. 

    • Sloanstar
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I'm having a very similar issue, I'm unable to ping from devices connected to the eero network toward devices on the wired segment, but the wired devices seem to be able to talk to one another just fine.

    I can even ping a wireless device and get a response. Pinging from that same wireless device to the same wired device yields no response.

    Some wired devices are experiencing connectivity issues out to the internet.

    Now I have quite a few IP reservations and port mappings, so with no advanced features on the eero like backup and restore... yes, it's 2020 and we're still calling backup and restore an advanced feature, FML... I'm not just going to delete the network and start provisioning again.

    In a dollars to dissatisfaction ratio, this eero bundle is likely the worst purchase I've ever made.

    • Sloanstar
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Ok, so thinking about it.. I did make a "Family Profile" for my daughter's phone to see what that was like - I only added her phone and tablet to it, nothing to do with these devices that can't talk to each other. It has a schedule on it that is supposed to stop internet access at bed time and these other features that never really seemed to work right so I just stopped using the profile and removed it.... This got me thinking that maybe there is some kind of configuration remnant left behind after deleting/removing... something that was wreaking havoc on my network...

    I started running some continuous pings to some devices.... I reloaded the error pro and for just a few intervals at start up I was able to ping my devices. The plot thickens, this new bit of information fuels my suspicion that some configuration remnant that I can't see because... advanced features?...  is to blame.

    Quickly I create a profile "default" and add all 46 devices to it. I pause the profile and then enable it.... the next few pings fail. Dejected I turn to my phone to dig further into the app when in the corner of my eye it's brighter that it was a moment ago... there's more white against my black background, my pings are echoed back?! It's working?! Was it really the fix? I try another address quickly as if I'm racing against some unseen force coming to steal away my packets. Success! Another, also successful.

    Ok, so I don't really want to add a device to this profile every time I onboard something new... can I remove it now and delete it? will everyone still like each other? Slowly, taking special care not to spook the newly domesticated packets I begin removing each device one by one from the profile, the idea here not to leave anything behind with the nuclear option of deleting the profile. With the number of devices left assigned to the profile at 0, it was time to say goodbye. So I deleted the "default" profile scattering its data to the ether with a confirmed "yes."

    Sitting back at the create your first profile screen I knew what I had to do. Pausing briefly from typing this I had to switch over to the continuous ping that was still running in the background and make sure that my connectivity was still there. A knot grew in the pit of my stomach, what if this wasn't the fix? What if this $315 hunk of absolute garbage was somehow that much trashier still.... It was time to find out...

    It's still there! It's still working I thought to myself amazed and bewildered. I immediately thought of the surprised Airman Doughtery from WarGames after surviving Joshua's simulated nuclear missile strike from the USSR, "Yeah, we're here! Jesus H. Christ! We're still here!"

    So, I guess the moral of this story is, don't use Family Profiles. They're half baked and can really jack up your network. If you're having some flaky problems after having created one of these god forsaken things try my steps above, maybe you'll have a positive outcome. Me, I'm moving to an Orbi deployment ASAP. I don't like walking away from something I spent this much money on, but at the end of the day it can't be a guessing game of if the network is going to work or not.

    Deuces eero, I'm out. See ya never.

      • ron_g
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Sloanstar entertaining post, sorry you are having so much trouble.  Your issue seems very different from mine since your issue was consistent problems between wired and wireless devices as you described it.  That makes me wonder if you are double NATed and wired devices are getting dhcp from one router and wireless devices from the other.  Are the devices you were testing between getting IP correctly in same range as eero?  Profiles don’t seem to harm my network. So I suspect they changes you made just fixed the issue as a side effect.  If issue is dhcp related the order in which you start things could really effect the outcome. Do you use managed switches for your wired side?  Eero suggests these tend to cause problems on the mesh.  So that might be related also.  If you have the issue again I suggest you contact support.  They are knowledgeable and can dig into your network and look at logs to determine if you have a loop or other issue causing the problems.  I think this issue they could identify.


      To get back on track with this threads issue.  They were not able to solve my macbook to macbook issues but I only had a one time need during upgrade so not sure if they firmware upgrades have corrected this I have not tested in a while.  I don’t have this issue anymore with any of my machines and I have a mix of Ubuntu, Mac OS, windows and smart home devices some of which let you access as admin.  No issues between wired and wireless here.  I have my ONT going directly into eero so not double NATed and no managed switches.

    • Sloanstar
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Nope, no double NAT. Wired is just a dumb switch with PoE. All the devices get DHCP from Eero. It's just a terrible product. It was a very strange issue. I'm not sure what mechanism the profiles use, the inability to communicate makes me think it might be some type of vlan mechanism. Anyway, if someone was having some strange issue, it's a troubleshooting step they could try.

      • cMoo92
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Sloanstar I tested on my network by putting my phone in one profile and my wired computer in another profile. I could ping the computer from the phone just fine. I paused the profile for the computer and pings stopped. I unpaused the profile and pings started right up. I’m not sure what the issue is on your network, but I certainly can’t reproduce it.

      • Sloanstar
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      cMoo92 Fair enough. I was at a loss myself. The above thread sparked the thought and the steps were the only thing that fixed it. I'm sure that deleting and re-provisioning the network would have worked, but I would rather douse the equipment in gasoline and light it on fire and watch it melt into a pile of goo than rebuild it from scratch. It might have been due to the state of the devices when the profile was deleted. I didn't check to see if they were paused or not, I just deleted the profile. So it is possible they were in a pause state and stayed that way since there was no profile with a schedule to unpause them. That data doesn't display on the host screen, only block from network (which was not enabled). There was definitely some type of remnant from the profile and not removing the devices from it before deleting it. How to reproduce it, I don't know. I can only speak to the symptoms. I have no desire to reproduce it. Nor access to the underlying code should I reproduce it to do anything about it.

    • scottc
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Sorry if this thread is no longer active, but I am new to Eero and experiencing this exact problem.  The OSX device is on the network and has internet access.  Eero shows the OSX device with 2 IPv4 addresses and an IPv6 address.  BUT when I execute an arp -a command from a Windows 10 machine, the IP address of the Mac is not shown in the arp cache.  And of course this means ping to that IP fails as well as attempting to telnet into the machine. Ping to the IPv6 address also fails with destination host unreachable.

    The firewall on the OSX device is disabled. 

    What setting on my Eero network is preventing my Windows 10 machine from seeing the iMac?

      • scottc
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      So after burning many hours trying to troubleshoot this, I found the problem. It turns out that my wife had installed McAffee Security Suite over a year ago on the Mac I was having trouble with.  And when I installed and joined the new Eero network, McAffee registered this network as a Public network. So the rest of my Eero network could not see it behind the McAfee firewall. Changing the network profile in McAfee firewall settings to Work/Home solved it immediately.

      I should have known better!  One machine not visible on the network is a problem with configuration on that machine and not the network!  Check built in and (in my case) 3rd party security software to be sure it isn't "protecting" you from yourself. 

      Hope this helps others that may have the same problem.

    • SteveSF
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view


    I have the same problem, see log below (#-delimited comments added).
    Sometimes machines on my eero WLAN can ping one another, sometimes not.
    I haven't mucked with address resolution tables, figuring that's eero's job,
    but the log says to me that eero is not getting it right.
    I've also had intermittent issues with authentication
    of ssh/scp/rsync to external sites that I've used regularly for years.

    Network: Xfinity cable modem, ethernet to eero gateway (.1),
    WLAN from eero gateway to eero2 (.20) and eero3 (.21).
    IP reservations for all devices via eero app.
    macair2 (.135) and macair3 (.145) are Macbook Air and macmini (.136) is Mac Mini,
    all running OSX, all firewalls off.
    Below: macair2 (connected to eero2 via WLAN)
    can ping macair3 and macmini (connected to eero3 via WLAN),
    but macair3 cannot ping macmini.
    arp -a from macair2 shows expected MAC address for macmini
    but arp -a from macair3 shows "(incomplete)" for macmini, making it unpingable.
    ---
    steve@macair2 ~: ping macmini
    PING macmini (192.168.4.136): 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 192.168.4.136: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=243.843 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.4.136: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=17.859 ms
    ^C
    ...
    steve@macair2 ~: arp -a
    ? (192.168.4.1) at 48:dd:c:6d:c8:ad on en0 ifscope [ethernet]    # gateway
    ? (192.168.4.20) at 48:dd:c:6e:ca:cd on en0 ifscope [ethernet]    # eero2
    # eero app shows eero3 at .21 but it doesn't appear here
    # ...
    macair2 (192.168.4.135) at 30:35:ad:d9:73:20 on en0 ifscope permanent [ethernet]
    macmini (192.168.4.136) at d4:dc:cd:f2:ca:26 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]    # as expected
    # ...
    macair3 (192.168.4.145) at 3c:22:fb:2d:72:68 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
    # ...
    steve@macair2 ~: ssh macair3
    Last login: Fri May 15 19:11:17 2020 from 192.168.4.135
    steve@macair3 ~/: ping macmini
    PING macmini (192.168.4.136): 56 data bytes
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
    ^C
    --- macmini ping statistics ---
    2 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss
    steve@macair3 ~/: arp -a
    ? (192.168.4.1) at 48:dd:c:6d:c8:ad on en0 ifscope [ethernet]    # gateway
    # eero app shows eero2 at .20 but it doesn't appear here
    # eero app shows eero3 at .21 but it doesn't appear here
    # ...
    macair2 (192.168.4.135) at 30:35:ad:d9:73:20 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
    macmini (192.168.4.136) at (incomplete) on en0 ifscope [ethernet]    # OOPS
    # ...
    macair3 (192.168.4.145) at 3c:22:fb:2d:72:68 on en0 ifscope permanent [ethernet]
    # ...
    steve@macair3 ~/: exit
    Connection to macair3 closed.
     

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