Feature Request: QoS
Hi There, I would like to see two new features added to the app for managing my wifi network. The first is just device usage so when I go in and see my devices listed can you show and track how much data each device is utilizing and report back that on the app?
Second is there any plan for adding device prioritization where I could give a certain device higher speeds for a designated amount of time? So say give the XBOX top priority for the next hour or see a device and even turn down the bandwidth it might be using?
Two features that would greatly enhance an already awesome WiFi solution!
141 replies
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Skeeter , I follow your post a ton and have hit many of the same frustrations with Eero and the lack of QoS and Content Filtering as well. Even though I can not do bandwidth throttling for particular devices, I ended finally resolving to buying a Circle. Had a hell of a time getting the two installed and working properly together, and often times finding myself rebooting my circle via the App because it uses Arc poisoning which sometimes clash with my main eero router. However, in the end it works. I'm just thankful I can reboot the circle from the app. I would still love to throttle devices though to stop certain devices from eating up too much bandwidth. My next challenge is probably going to be getting Sonos to work properly with my Eero routers. :-/
Not looking forward to it lol -
Bash ah yes and I see the Circle looks like a nice device for content filtering. Assuming you saw that they recommend connecting it via Ethernet to the eero and also indicate they are investigating some issues with them working together. Agree that at least for me controlling bandwidth usage at the device level is the most pressing. As far as Sonos goes I've got 5 of them little buggers here in the house and don't have any issue with erro so I suspect you will be ok. Good luck! 👍
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deepraver I couldn't agree more. I work from home a couple of days per week and use Skype for VoIP. I would start out by saying that I have been very happy with my eero routers (all 6 of them) and the support I have received from eero. Having said that, the lack of the basic capability to prioritize my work traffic from the rest of traffic generated by kids home for the summer is becoming a serious issue. I have also noticed a significant decline in streaming performance since moving away from my ASUS routers. I didn't think it would become a stumbling block and be as big of an issue as it has become, but if we don't get some basic QoS (or a timeline for support) I'll have to move to another platform. I simply can't compete with multiple streaming TVs, game consoles and mobile phones.
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Skeeter Awesome. I was really concerned about the Sonos integration. The Circle doesn't need to be connected via Ethernet. I have mine working just fine over wifi. The biggest pain I just recently came across is that I can't put Circle on my Guest Network. I basically wanted to keep my main network and unlimited bandwidth private and use Eero's Guest network for a Teenager whom just moved into my house. I wanted the teen on the guest network so I'm not subject to viruses they may download via gaming sites. Unfortunately, Circle doesn't work on Eero's Guest Network so that idea didn't work. That's only main issue I saw.
Does the Sono's slow down your network throughput? I here they can be quite chatty over your network. Being able throttle devices would be great though! Hopefully the guys at Eero build in this feature. -
This is a bit off-topic from QoS, but I know there has been some discussion here around home security and content filtering.
In addition to announcing our 2nd generation hardware today, we also shared our upcoming service eero Plus. We are really excited to provide this offering, allowing eero customers to create an even greater level of security and peace of mind with their networks.
While eero will always keep up to date to protect your network against the latest in security threats, eero Plus ensures that your devices stay safe from landing on websites that may contain malware, phishing attacks, and many other types of threats to your personal devices. In addition to protecting your devices, eero Plus also lets you better protect those on your network from seeing inappropriate content.
We hope those of you interested in content filtering and greater networking security will be excited to eero Plus! For more, please see this help center article.
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Jeff C. Hey Jeff congrats on the new services offering and updates for eero, this certainly is going to add a nice level of security to home networks. Does this feature allow me to blacklist websites, certain apps or both? Also any chance there are time restrictions that say "turn off Xbox Live" gaming say M-F at say 10pm - next day kind of thing?
While this doesn't appear to directly address my initial post on this thread on bandwidth usage by device or specific app, it would appear that you've got the engineering in place to turn that on with this new feature set and if I read this right, I am not looking at having to buy new eero devices to use this.
Appears to be a nice solid step in the right direction! Well done!
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Skeeter Currently, the websites that will be blacklisted/whitelisted will be based on the database we refer to and the certain toggles that are set for the individual profile. However, I'm happy to pass along this feedback as the team continues to evolve eero Plus.
As for the time restrictions, you could actually already do this from within Family Profiles. If you wanted to, you could create a profile for someone in the home or just the Xbox and have it "Paused" from using the internet on a set schedule. For more, see this article:
https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/209385186-How-do-I-use-schedules-in-Family-Profiles-
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Great to see a new generation! Will there be any discount codes for existing eero owners who want to order the new version? Thanks!
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rynoshark You can get them full price but with priority order processing and overnight shipping as a gen 1 owner. A note came out earlier today. 🙁
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Hi Jeff/eero team,
I'm a new eero 2nd gen owner. So far I like the system a lot. But I would also like to strongly request QoS capability. I occasionally work from home and use VoIP. It would be great if eero had the ability to implement VoIP the traditional way such as defining DSCP/ToS rules for prioritization - or have more simplified options of selecting device(s) and giving it a priority queue. For example:
- we have the ability to add a device to a QoS/Priority list
- within this list we assign them in order of preference for bandwidth - both download and upload percentage of the ISP bandwidth detected by eero speedtest. So let's say we add three devices to this list out of 10. These three devices would be given the priority over bandwidth available if the WAN is under contention. And the first device in the list would be given the most preference over the second, and so on.
- Then finally, we have a "Normal" QoS priority setting that will be configured for how much bandwith can be shared for the remaining devices when the WAN is under contention - a percentage: ie: 10% down and 5% up of the detected ISP bandwidth - to these devices to protect them from starvation, but to not let them exceed these percentages when the Priority devices are requiring it.
From there, eero would simply monitor network usage and adjust these calculations in realtime to provide bandwidth as configured. Hope this may be of interest.
But at this time, any QoS implementation is appreciated to get things started. Thanks!
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Been having a lot of issues with this recently too. I have someone who works from my house and his laptop is constantly de-prioritized even when he's the only one on the network. This causes him to have to switch from the house wifi to his hotspot on his cell phone. Any update would be greatly appreciated.
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A lot of good ideas here! I think to keep this product in true Eero simple fashion (do what is right for the user), the number of eero-admin configurable options should be limited, if any.
I think, eero should automatically detect when the WAN interface is congested and identify the flows that should be prioritized. This includes:
- Flows that appear to be streaming bi-directionally. This is (usually) a great indicator of real-time media like VoIP and/or video conferencing.
- Large streaming downloads that:
- Are streaming to a LAN device that is known to be a Smart TV or other digital media device
- Originates from a set of known IPs and/or hostnames (e.g. netflixvideo.com)
- Appear to match patterns that are consistent with RTP over HTTP (a bit of introspection if encrypted or HTTP header analysis if not encrypted)
- Use non-HTTP ports/protocols that are known to use streaming media (UDP, RTP, Skype, etc.)
- Identify traffic that can be throttled with little perceived impact (e.g. Mail, SMTP, IMAP) and put it in a best effort queue
For all of the high priority traffic, simply use a "strict priority" QoS approach that processes prioritized packets ahead of all other queues for outbound traffic. Inbound flows for that traffic should also receive strict priority locally, but other non-priority packets should be tail-dropped to trigger the sender to slow down their transmission, reducing ingress congestion.
Using this approach there is no need to configure time-of-day rules, define DSCP or packet tags, or identify devices that should receive absolute priority. Instead, everything "just works" across all devices giving the media that is the most sensitive to latency the most priority, regardless of device. It will really just be in the very rare circumstance that you are consistently saturating your WAN connection that you will run out of bandwidth (and you should probably update your internet connection in this case anyway).
I think eero can really differentiate itself by doing QoS automatically. All of the existing consumer-level QoS is complete crap, and it behooves eero to implement something like this to prevent consumers from pointing to the WLAN as the source of the problem when it is really congestion on the WAN resulting in packet loss, jitter, and latency.
With this implemented, eero will be miles ahead of the other consumer-grade WiFi mesh manufactures, at least until one of them does this as well :)
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I think, eero should automatically detect when the WAN interface is congested
While I completely agree with the sentiment, the technology exists to not even have to worry about when to enable it. QoS can simply be enabled all the time, at least in terms of bufferbloat protection/prevention.
Using fq_codel eero can (and, according to eero, gen 2 already does) manage bufferbloat quite well. FQ_codel is stellar at this, and really is the current best-in-class "general QoS" algorithm. I'm not exactly sure why it's not implemented in gen 1 hardware, but if it could be, that would be stellar. Regardless, gen 2 has this now, so perhaps this problem is solved?-
davethenerd To be honest, I hadn't heard of fq_codel, let alone its inclusion in the Gen 2 eeros. The philosophy taken by this algorithm is very much along the lines of what I was envisioning, but even more generic. It looks like it prioritizes small traffic and better regulates large flows, out of the box. Some of the benchmarks were really impressive and ultimately just stabilizes the flows to allow you to maximize the throughput of your internet connection.
In theory the eeros use the internet speed tests to automatically configure the upstream and downstream rate limits and automatically configures the basic QoS settings.
Jeff C. are you able to comment on fq_codel's actual implementation in Eero Gen 2? Maybe we are wasting our time thinking we need QoS controls when something like this is hidden in the product?
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mattv123 I will say that if fq_codel's inclusion into the 2nd Gen eeros was supposed to help buffer bloat, it certainly isn't working. See the test results from dslreport.com:
I am on a business class Comcast connection with dedicated upstream/downstream, hence the A+ quality connection. But clearly the router is struggling to prioritize small-flow traffic during the speed tests, resulting in the buffer bloat.
Hopefully there is just some config required in a future release and this will smooth right out 🙌
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mattv123 interesting. I'll do some more testing here, as well. Are you seeing this on a wired connection or a Wi-Fi connection?
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davethenerd the test was on WiFi on a newer mbp
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mattv123 It's worth testing on Ethernet (preferably on the router eero) just to confirm this. Otherwise it's hard to know if your buffer bloat issues are internal to your network. fq_codel really only prevents WAN-based issues.
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davethenerd Fair point. I'll give that a go and report back.
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Content aside
- Status Under Consideration
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