219Feature 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!
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Hi Jeff C. Well I have at least for the time being moved over to the dark side with Orbi to test out their mesh technology and QoS capabilities. While I have been thrilled with eero for it's simple use and basic device monitoring I truly needed more. I'll keep watching for any updates on where eero is going here but honestly I started this request 8 months ago and there is no implementation yet news of what you guys are doing here.
Honestly I'm disappointed and have 45 days to "evaluate" this other solution to see if you guys can step up on this topic. I know I'm not alone on this requirement so It saddens me to report this move but please either tell us sorry we can't do this with a gen 1 product or give us a road map like cantyjeffrey and others have asked for.I'll be watching and truly hope there is more then just no comment or you delete my post here. 😑
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Hi Skeeter —
Thanks for checking in. I'm saddened to hear you are looking to try another product, but hopefully, eero will be an appealing option for you again in the future.
Given your need for this feature, I do understand your disappointment, but I'd like to reiterate that we don't have any timelines for features requested here unless one has been explicitly shared. One of the goals of this community was to gauge interest in what types of things our customers would like to see added to eero. This feature has definitely been one of the more Liked and discussed requests, and I can assure you that hasn't gone unnoticed.
With that said, building any feature can take time as well as have the resources available that are often dedicated to existing projects. Implementing a form of device prioritization is something we really hope to do, but it needs to be done right to meet the high the standards we set for anything we put into the eero experience. We don't want to apply any features sloppily. We want to ensure it has the time to be developed, vetted, and absolutely won't cause problems elsewhere.
Again, I really appreciate your feedback in our community. It is invaluable to our team.
Lastly, I just wanted to touch on the last part of your post regarding deletion. We will never delete a post in our community unless it is in direct violation of our community guidelines. While we hope that everything said here is positive, we understand that isn't always going to be the case. However, we want to work with those who have feedback or ran into a problem and find ways to improve that experience so that we can continue to deliver the best possible experience.
Thanks again, Skeeter. We hope to see you here again in the future!
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Jeff C. Hey Jeff,
Thanks for the note and you're understanding of the gap between what I need on QoS and your current offering. Please know this I am a fan if eero and will continue to recommend them to friends. They are super easy to get up and running, provide rock solid fast WiFi with comprehensive coverage, and the app provides just enough information and control for most.
Please note these eero's aren't going anywhere so here comes the geek in me. As your product matures or grows in feature set, don't hesitate like you've done in the past to tap me on the should to look at new features, etc. I am happy to assist as an alpha or beta tester to help you guys make sure the offering is as solid as possible.
Best wishes, and trust to say I'm not going too far. 😉
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Skeeter I am in the same boat as you. Love eero, fantastic system and great customer service. I've never had better coverage in my house, but the lack of QoS is becoming a real problem in the evening when TV is being streamed and big files get changed in Dropbox for work. Videos start stuttering or pausing. Please share your experiences with Orbi. I am also almost at the point where I would switch away from my three eeros just to solve this problem (as long as the solution was as seamless as eero).
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I need QOS for evening videoconferences with Asia. Addressing bufferbloat would help a lot. Or maybe I need to put a Ubiquiti behind my cable modem, and then Eero for in-house distribution.
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tstrand I did this (small edge router with integrated switch) about 3 months ago and it has been very stable for me. Bufferbloat went away.
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rynoshark I want to respectful of eero as I'm sure you do. I am going to do some testing and evaluation of the true capabilities of the QoS for this product and will be happy to report back to you but we need to take this off of this community forum to be fair to our friends at eero. You are welcome to contact me directly at Skeeter at harrisimedia.com
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Jeff C. we need prioritization desperately at least for wired ports to support VOIP (MagicJack Plus in my case)... I can't believe the answer is to buy an edge router and move my VoIP up to my attic where the modem is... A roadmap would help people hang in there with you.. How about detailing the "basic QoS support"?? I love eero and recommended it many times... this has just recently become an issue.. I don't hear the problem on my end (download), but others hear chopiness.. I several device on my home network and 4 eeros.. help.. please.
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Jeff C. Hey Jeff, well hold tight but I'm back!!!
After 3 weeks, the Orbi's were put in the closet last night and the eero's are plugged back in and running. It proved to be an interesting test and I'll provide the run down for those here that are interested to know. While the Orbi was as simple to set up as eero and thing started out good, they went down hill quickly.
On the positive side of the world - they are as fast as eero, they claim better coverage although I didn't see it and their primary router gave you more direct ports for wired connections. This provided helpful as it made printing to my wireless printer - auto wake-up which eero has never done. There are also plenty of controls for things like locking down specific services, URL's or pausing devices but sadly no QoS at the device level.On the negative side Orbi's mobile setup app shows you devices connected as long as your in the network but that's all. No pausing of devices, status of usage or anything. You need to download another app or you need to log into their web admin portal and you can see who is doing what, block devices, turn off services or filter for say adult content. Also during this test came a firmware update that killed WiFi-Calling, and made my August Lock all but a dumb deadbolt. As of today, no ETA on when they will fix either of these issues. Rather sad and a strong sense of Daja-Vu here? 🙄
So the Orbi's went back in the box, in the end for what I needed the eero's give me same speeds, same coverage and a better app experience with at least real-time bandwidth usage in the palm of my hand and pausing of devices. If you do really need to block URL's etc than Orbi is the way to go, but for me I'll stick with the eero's and hope that one day we see better management. At least I can say "They Just Work!" and for me that's the most important thing. It's just surprising that any kind of load balancing QoS seems to be such a Holly Grail kind of feature. 🍷
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Welcome back, Skeeter 👋
Thanks again for your feedback. We will keep you and the rest of the thread posted on any updates.
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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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Lefteous —
Thanks for reaching out. eero would never deprioritize a device. If you haven't yet, please contact eero support we can take a look. Feel free to give us a call at 1-877-659-2347 or email us at support@eero.com .
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Jeff C.
Thanks Jeff, I'm in contact now. I'll post the results of the support here as well.
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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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mattv123 I get your idea of keeping it simple which is the foundation of what people like about eero but don’t agree with your approach completely. While I see validity in based on type of content or know IPs or host names they get prioritization automatically. This logic really only works if you have only one device going to said “known” location for priority routing.
But there needs to be more and the ability to have some control and this doesn’t need to be complicated. Thus my point starting this thread over 9 months ago. What I feel is a good compromise and would keep this simple without over complicating this is something like this UI command set.
We already see devices and bandwidth usage add to this same interface the ability to toggle priority on a designated device and while your add it with a toggle priority on/off, give me a scroll selector for time to prioritize. Next Hour, next 2-3, rest of the day kind of thing.
Want to take it to the rest of what I envisioned allow me to select a device and with a scroll selector or slider allow me to say give this device no more than “X MBS speed”. Again you could also select a designated timeframe this took effect or not.
These tweaks to the UI and control I believe would solve a majority of the users needs for QoS while keeping the general simplicity of eero.
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Skeeter thanks for the response!
You are right in that using content classifications (IPs, hostnames, etc.) is dangerous in that it may not cover what everyone is looking to prioritize. However, you can have 95%+ efficacy through a combination of classifying the most popular services (e.g. Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, FaceTime, Skype, etc.) then catching the long tail through the traffic pattern analysis and matching.
Call me a tech optimist, but I think we are at a point with our networking technology that we should be able to make QoS happen automatically without requiring any admin input. I know it is tempting to say you want to manually prioritize certain devices or traffic, but a healthy dose of machine learning and big data analysis (sorry for using these annoying marketing speak) can solve this problem 99.9% of the time. Instead of preemptively configuring QoS policies, you would help train the service if it makes the wrong policy decision via an easy-to-use UI in the app. This just makes the algorithm smarter for everyone through crowd intelligence (aaah sorry for more marketing speak).
I feel that eero is the kind of innovative startup that could master this approach unlike all of the other incumbents. I don't want to have to think about my Wi-Fi or the policies configured on it, particularly when it comes to tweaking QoS just to make it work. If I wanted to tweak it, I would put the eero in bridge mode and buy a router that has good QoS / traffic management at the WAN.
All just my two cents and maybe not practical, but one can dream! 😉
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mattv123 You point is well taken and can agree that in a perfect world especially if the device has the ability to learn (ML) then yes this would solved 99% of the problem without manual configurations. I would suspect that if there were manual overrides like I suggested in my response to you with machine language in place to learn preferences that over time these settings would no longer be needed.
What we all need to stop dream about and get eero to address is this problem with QoS, it's not going away as a need and based on the size of this thread and conversation this is no other feature more desired by the user community then QoS.
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Skeeter I'll agree with that. Something is better than nothing and I don't think anyone here has the appetite to wait the time it will take to build a proper ML solution 🙂
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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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mattv123 I did some digging, and talked with some folks at eero, and have confirmed that the information I initially received was incomplete... and led to an incorrect conclusion (on both the part of the eero folks with whom I was speaking and, of course, me 😉).
eero does use fq_codel, but not on the WAN port, only for Wi-Fi and, specifically, only for airtime fairness. There is no shaping done on upstream traffic of any kind, at least not currently (and this was before v3.5 came out, so I suppose it's possible that has changed, but not likely).So we're back to wanting this as a feature request. So important.
As a helpful hint (and the topic of an upcoming article of mine, probably next week): most BufferBloat is caused by the crappy queuing algorithms in cable modems. Turns out that CableLabs mandated a change to that for DOCSIS 3.1 modems and, indeed, those modems basically eliminate any upstream BufferBloat because of it. Here's the hint: that change is implemented modem-wide in D3.1 modems, including scenarios where just a DOCSIS 3.0 connection is used. So you could go and get a D3.1 modem, use it in D3.0 mode, and you'd still get the BufferBloat improvements/reductions. I've tested this here with great results.
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davethenerd Interesting! OK, so does that mean that if eero implemented fq_codel on the WAN interface, then the issues with pre DOCSIS 3.1 crapy queuing should in theory be masked / mitigated (as the bandwidth management queuing is now happening on the router instead of the modem)?
Or will the problem still happen regardless of any improvements made by eero?
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mattv123 indeed, WAN QoS (fq_codel being the current best algorithm for that) would help mitigate this. But that’s done at the cost of *slightly* reducing one’s bandwidth. After all, the idea is to keep the upstream from hitting the limit of the modem and suffering the modem’s crummy queuing algorithm. But, obviously, that’s the only thing one can do with current Docsis 3.0 modems.
The solution in D3.1 modems is much better, since you can take full advantage of your available bandwidth... and that especially matters if its variable.
So, yes, eero should offer this, if possible (I don’t know if their CPUs can do it, for one). But those looking to eek out the best performance will get that with a DOCSIS 3.1 modem.
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Fine so long as some devices can be throttled. That is important for some users.
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+100 to what Mattv123 suggests. Really well thought out suggestion.
I agree that qos configuration for the consumer market is really terrible. This is a great opportunity for eero to change that and stand out as a leader in this area 😎
