
Devices not connecting to closest eero
A quick background on my setup:
- I am running the latest version (1.4) of the iOS app
- I am running the latest firmware (2.1.0) on my three eeros.
- My first eero is connected as follows: modem -> eero --> switch
- My other two eeros are hardwired via ethernet back into the switch.
Upon updating the iOS app, I started checking to see which devices are connected to which eeros. I was surprised at what I found.
- Most of my devices are connected to the primary eero.
- An iPad in an upstairs bedroom is connected (with a weak signal) to the primary eero which is downstairs in my den even though there is an eero in the same bedroom as the iPad. (The iPad stays in that bedroom, it never wanders around the house).
- My Rachio sprinkler controller is also connected to the den eero even though there is an eero much closer to the garage.
These are not the results I expected. I thought I placed the eeros to give me strong coverage throughout the house but the devices don't seem to want to connect to the closest available eero. I also thought since I wired them via ethernet that this would give me the strongest possible mesh network possible.
Did I do something wrong in my setup? Any suggestions on how to correct this?
Thanks,
Mike
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Hey Mike K —
Thanks for reaching out. It is awesome to hear that you are already testing out this new feature!
In most cases, your devices will choose the best eero to connect to but sometimes connected devices may stay connected to eeros further away. It really depends on how that specific device handles roaming and handoff. While we support 802.11r, we're still working on full support for 802.11r Fast Transition. The issue is this protocol can cause issues for older WiFi devices, so we are working carefully on implementation.
With stationary devices like your Rachio sprinkler system, if you happened to unplug or reboot an eero, there is also a chance it just stayed connected to another eero within range.
If you see that a device isn’t connected to the closest eero, don’t worry as it may still have an excellent connection. However, if you’re seeing weaker connections when there is a closer eero, you can toggle wifi off and back on for the device to connect to a closer eero. It should automatically connect to the best eero.
Again, at the end of the day, these decisions are ultimately made by the device. However, we are continuing to put in the work on our end to make sure eero can do whatever possible to make these experiences more seamless.
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I've noticed the same issue with the same devices, but Rachio switched to a closer eero unit after a few hours, and the other devices (phones, laptops, etc.) switched more rapidly. It appears that IoT devices (Rachio, Nest, Smartcams, etc.) accessing the internet less frequently are slower to change eero access.
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Thanks Jeff C.
Upon checking today, I see that the iPad now is connected to the eero in its room, without any change on my part. But the Rachio is still connected to the further (office) device. Maybe that will correct itself with time? I'll keep an eye on this to see if any patterns emerge. I would hope that my stationary IoT devices always are connected to the closest device to ensure a strong WiFi signal. With other mobile devices, where I'm moving around the house with them, I would assume that they bounce from one to the other depending on what is is range for where I am at any particular moment.
Maybe it's a bad assumption on my part to think that a device will connect to the strongest device in range and that instead it stays connected to whatever it first attached to until/unless that signal disappears or falls out of range?
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Thanks for following up Mike K and Mdavidm —
Again, while eero is designed to work in this way, the decision of which eero to connect to (and switch to) is ultimately up to the device. If an IoT device, like a stationary sprinkler system, is within range of two eeros, it may connect to one and not the other. You can try toggling the WiFi off and back on for these devices (if the device doesn't have such an option, you can power cycle it) to see if it connects to the correct eero.
We just recently began surfacing information on which eeros your devices are connected to in the app. If you have any feedback or suggestions on how to improve this feature based on your experience with it thus far, we're all ears!
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Jeff C.
Would it be possible to list all the devices connected to an eero from the device page itself? For example, if I am viewing the information page on my Hallway eero can you list all the devices connected to it here. Would help me determine if I am overloading a single device and how I might be able to spread the load.
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Just installed a new Gen2 Pro system today. I found that my iPhoneX kept connected to a remote Eero even when I am right next to the main/router Eero. I tried turning Wifi on/off a few times on the phone and even re-powered it, but it kept connecting to the remote one. I finally did a 'reset' on the remote Eero that it was connected to from the app and then it connected to the one nearby. But hoping the roaming will be a little more intelligent than that.
I'm thinking there should be an app button called 'Connect device to Best Eero' that would force it to reconnect?
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I also just installed the Pro system today which is basically the gen 2. I tried the google wifi, orbi, and then the Eero. Coming from using a Open Mesh setup. So far the Eero is the best at handing off to the right access point. I'm pretty impressed. After first installing we noticed our iphones getting stuck on our master bedroom access point and not rolling to the next unit when roaming. After a few hours of playing with placement we got that pretty much settled. I have to say day 1 I am really impressed. Fingers crossed. We just got gigabit comcast coax upgrade here and we are able to get the 940 mps wired and about 560 mps wireless. It does have a lot to do with the iphone on the roaming, I know my Dell laptop jumps from access point to access point with no issues. My $1000 iphone though wants to connect to 2.4 no matter what brand I try.
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Add me to the list of users who have a problem with wifi handoff with my main eero and 2 beacons. My devices are not handing off to the nearest beacon or they get stuck on the main eero and will not hand off to the closest beacon. Having to manually turn the wifi off and on to try to force a connection on my iPhone, iPad, etc., is just not a good solution.
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Why can we not simply enforce this in the user interface of the app? We have the ability to block the device entirely. It’s not that much further to allow you to specify which Mac addresses you’d like to be allowed on which eero hub, and thereby enforcing connection to only those eero hubs to which you’ve granted that device access. Maybe I don’t understand some nuances to the engineering side challenges here, but I would think if you can design the user interface to allow a blanket MAC address ban on all hubs, you can easily allow for selective MAC address banning on a per hub basis and thus grant the user control over certain devices and control over which hubs they end up on. The capability is there. This just seems like there are far more latent devices out there than they anticipated in their initial user testing, and the engineer team didn’t realize how many cases there would be of devices that suck at switching to a new access point in a mesh system. Not eeros fault the devices suck at this... But, it is their fault that their $500 routers still have this problem and this ticket is more than a year old... hope they don’t start going down the dark road of user access complacency. If I wanted to buy a system for the company to tell me 3 years later they addressed a critical user interface flaw, I’d buy a Netgear router and save myself a few hundred bucks...
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+1 for MAC address blacklist (selection) feature.
My Sense energy monitor keeps dropping offline because it's switching back and forth between two beacons. The device is installed in the electrical panel so toggling the wifi isn't a quick workaround. Would love to be able to define which beacon it connects to.
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Why has this thread gone silent? Eero tech support, you don’t have anything further to say about these issues? I have 5 eeros throughout my home and my WiFi is still terrible. I have devices on one side of the house connecting to eeros on the other side of the house and visa versa resulting in multiple devices with poor performance. This is a massive issue. I spent multiple hundreds of dollars to avoid this headache. Isn’t it your website that says “Life is too short for bad WiFi?” And “You need a system that works” Makes me sick reading through your site.
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I've noticed that when there is a power blip and the Eeros restart that things get messed up and my gateway typically ends up with a whole lot of connections that should be attached to closer eeros.
Also, another thing I've noticed is that some devices do not seem to know how to connect to a mesh network and wnat to connect behind the scenes to a device ID rather than to a network name (and closest Eero). In particular, I've got six security cameras that all do this and I've got four Xbox 360s that also do this. I've also got a Black & Decker wifi slow cooker that does this.
For the security cameras, I have to restart the devices and hope that they go to a new Eero and the results have been pretty good, however they sometimes try and connect back to the specific Eero that they originally connected to. With my previous mesh network (Nova) the cameras would show the different Nova units but all of them had the same network name so I had to guess which one was the closest. So Eero is WAY better than my previous mesh solution.
For the Xbox 360s, which I use throughout the house as full-feature WMC extenders, they don't even give me the option so connecting to a mesh network is a bad solution for the Xbox 360s. I've had to get a Nova square instead of a Beacon for each Xbox 360 so that I can hardwire them directly into the Nova. That seems to work very well in fact - but only because they have ethernet capability!
Eero support keeps telling us there are nuances to making wifi devices connect and that they cannot control that which I agree with to the extent that it is a challenge. But it's not creative enough. Here's my suggestion:
Manual config capability: Give us the option to go into a specific Eero/Beacon and when we see a device that should be connected elsewhere, allow us to disallow that device from connecting just to that Eero/Beacon in the future.
Auto config capability: When a device connects to an Eero/Beacon have the other Eero's/Beacons on the mesh network try connecting and measure which one has the best connection then auto-deny and auto-accept that device to the best Eero/Beacon.
At least see if we can have the manual config option please! I know we already have the option to manually disallow a device from joining the network but I'm suggesting a different layer of control so we can also disallow the device from connecting to a specific Eero or Beacon while still allowing it on the mesh wifi network.
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Here is another post with the same issue I have a 10 minute video of this issue happening on two iPhone xs max’s at the same time. I suspect all my devices would be the same if I moved around with all of them. both iPhones stay on the the main eero connected to modem while I’m right next to the remote eero on the otherside of my house. I’ve toggled WiFi on and off, airplane mode, I open and close other apps, load safari pages and nothing just won’t switch force close the eero app open it back up and it still stays on the wrong eero! It’s really odd to me that my device is deciding to stay on the one bar connection across the house versus the full bars right next to it and it’s really odd to me that you guys don’t have a feature/toggle where I can just press to connect to this eero! I think that’s the best feedback everyone on this topic has given y’all!!! seems like it would be a simple fix to add an eero force connect toggle for each eero on the app. This is pretty disappointing for me because the whole reason I return my Xfinity equipment and Xfi pods was for pretty much this same reason, I had to constantly toggle my Wi-Fi on and off every time I moved 5ft around in my house except that actually worked when I did it, this doesn’t matter it will just switch whenever it wants too. $500 bucks just seems a little steep for something that can’t handle switching devices properly or $1200 iPhones seems a little ridiculous when they can’t handle switching. Either way it’s one of these devices that we buy at steep premiums that don’t work properly or as advertised. It gets super frustrating and very rare to find a product of any kind that the consumer doesn’t end up paying to be an R&D consultant lol and in the end no real solutions just the next version. You’d think by 2019 these things wouldn’t be an issue since we have autonomous cars. Wait doesn’t that tech rely on some kinda networking and mapping and clear device communication to work properly as well???
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This is an absolutely ridiculous problem and to have Eeros support bask in ignorance with a grin about function of design is disgusting. Wake up Eeros support!! This is a major problem. We all bought into this system purchasing extra devices thinking we'd get better service throughout our homes. But instead we have poor connections with devices stuck on far away end points. This makes absolutely zero common sense. I am furious with this terrible design and I'm happy to let all friends, family and review site know about this flawed product that I would never recommend anyone to waste their money on like I have.