Feature Request: Add support for PPPoE

messenger  I hope they add support soon for PPPoE, I'm currently using bridge mode but losing a lot of the eero features. :(

TheKasif I have found that putting the main eero ( connected to router/modem combi ) into a DMZ does help and have been able to keep my system “not” bridged and working well. If you fancy giving it a go I can explain what I did.

messenger please do explain 😊

messenger thanks for your explanation, is really good. One question, when it comes to DHCP both the modem/router and the eero keep it enabled? and if yes, is the IP address range the same or must be different on the eero? (assuming eero is in the DMZ and has a static IP address from the modem and modem wifi is OFF and nothing else is connected to it) thanks in advance.

jerrylion yes both are enabled for DHCP on modem/router & eero, but from what I understand, by having the gateway eeros IP in the DMZ (what’s been assigned to it by the modem/router), the modem/routers DHCP process is bypassed and the eero takes the load. Yes I have WiFi off on the modem/router but due to its location have 2 PCs hardwired in to 2 spare ports and all seems to work fine. I haven’t fixed a static IP for the main eero so I do check to make sure the modem/router, if restarted for any reason, hasn’t given the main eero a new IP, then that wouldn’t match what’s in the DMZ. I hope that makes sense , as said am not an IT expert by any stretch of the imagination! I’ll have another go at answering if I’ve missed what you meant :) the litmus test for me was I have 2 PS4s in the house and with this set up have no issues with online gaming 👍

messenger thank you so much for your response. I haven't get the eero yet (order it's been processed), but I went ahead and tested this with an Airport extreme router. What I did:

-Disabled wifi in modem/router

-Disabled DHCP in modem/router

-Disconnected all physical (ethernet) devices from modem/router

-Added static IP on the router (Airport/eero)

-Enabled DHCP/NAT on the router (Airport/eero) IP range HAD to be different from modem/router:

So modem/router is now: Public IP and Private IP 192.168.1.1

Router (Airport/eero) is now: Private IP 192.168.1.2 (first IP assigned by modem/router) and distributes IPs from 192.168.2.2 to 192.168.2.200 (note the last bits starts from 2.X as opposed to 1.X)

-Added the Airport/eero IP (192.168.1.2) to the DMZ in the modem/router

Everything seems to work well, but I don't have any gaming to test issues with double NATing, Airport extreme gives me a warning though that it is double NATing and should rather be in bridge mode.

I can see both the modem/router at 192.168.1.1 and devices on segment 192.168.2.X I would assume if modem/router had the WIFI enabled or any other devices connected physically I would be able to also see them from the network created by Airport.

I am not technical either so apologies if my language is incorrect :)

Can't wait for my eero to arrive and experience this for real and see a big improvement in my network and WIFI.

Another question I have in mind (a bit off topic) is if I will be able to subscribe to Secure Plus as I am located in Australia, contact support told me is not available in my Country but I wonder how can they prevent/stop me from purchasing and if I manage to purchase (US phone/address, etc), would it work or not? anyone know? are there any IP location controls and if yes, can they be bypassed?  :)

thanks once again.

jerrylion hi, sorry for late reply works been manic, but shouldn't really complain in current climate!! tbh it sounds like you have more knowledge then me, as I didn't do any of the above that you are describing other then place the assigned IP into the DMZ, which then allows my eero to work as if stand alone and not behind another router. I noticed when catching up on the thread jhollington also explains a similar set up below.

UnBip Actually, if you're using the Bell Home Hub 3000, you can set it to "Advanced DMZ" mode, which is basically a bridge mode for all intents and purposes (there are technically some differences, but those aren't things that are likely to matter to 99% of normal home users). 

The Advanced DMZ mode allows you to assign the public IP address of the HH3000 to a specific device on your LAN, based on its MAC address. This will allow your Eero to basically act like a normal router rather than being stuck in bridge mode or having to suffer with double NAT.

To set this up, you simply need to log into your HH3000, go to "Advanced tools and settings" and then "DMZ" and check the box marked "Advanced DMZ" and either type in or paste in the MAC address of your Eero. Make sure you leave DHCP enabled on your HH3000 as well, as this needs to be on for the Eero to pick up the public IP address automatically. 

jhollington are you sure the eero would get a public IP address or the one provided by the HDCP server on the modem, which cannot be public.

jerrylion Definitely. I'm waiting for my Eero Pro system to arrive later this week, but I just tested the configuration with my existing router earlier today (a Netgear RAX80), and it's running on the public IP address.

In fact, if you go to the DMZ settings, you'll actually see this explained under the "Advanced DMZ" section, with your public IP address shown right in the description.

There's some jiggery-pokery that the HH3000 is doing to accomplish this, as the internal IP address of the HH3000 still shows up in ICMP traces, and the public IP still exists on the HH3000 WAN interface as well, and it continues working as a NAT router in its own fashion, but for all intents and purposes, it works just fine for most typical use cases, including passing traffic back to services running behind the internal router via port forwarding, and even inbound VPN connections (I've seen some older reports that it doesn't pass ESP properly for pure IPSec, but OpenVPN appears to work just fine).

jhollington 

jhollington were you able to get the Eero to connect with the advanced DMZ?  I can see the correct IP in the Eero app, but it will not connect to the internet. Thanks in advance!

Oully My Eero Pro finally arrived, and did seem to be a little bit temperamental compared to setting it up with my RAX80, but I managed to get it working in the end.

The critical factor in my case seemed to be getting the latest Eero updates installed first, before I enabled the advanced DMZ feature. I don't know if there was a compatibility problem in the firmware that shipped with the Eero Pro (I didn't check which version it was originally), but I was more or less having the same issue as you were when I first set it up — the Eero Pro got the public IP address from the Home Hub 3000 just fine, but couldn't actually reach the internet. 

However, after I disabled advanced DMZ and let the Eero Pro install the latest firmware update (basically letting it just lease an internal private IP address from the Home Hub 3000 like any other device would), I was then able to get it working after I turned the advanced DMZ back on — although it did require a couple of reboots of both the Home Hub 3000 and the Eero Pro before it decided to give up its old private IP address and pick up the public address from the Home Hub 3000 instead.

When configuring the advanced DMZ, also make sure that you're using the correct MAC address, as each of the two Ethernet ports on the Eero Pro has a different one (they appear to be one digit off in my case, which is probably the norm for all units). If you assign the MAC address that the Home Hub 3000 actually "sees" for the Eero you should be fine (you should see "Eero" on the list of devices in the DMZ screen), but once you've done that you have to make sure you always leave it plugged into the same Ethernet port. 

jhollington Thank you so much, truly appreciate it!  When I think about it, I did try prior to installing the firmware update.  I will give it a try tonight

jhollington I was able to get it to work right away.  That said, I had to unplug the gateway to move it and I just can't get it to connect anymore.  It either won't give up the internal private IP or won't connect to internet if it sees the public one.  Unfortunately, it seems to be impacting my wireless speedtests.  Have you had any issues since? Thanks

Oully I've had the same problem... It's very persnickety if you try to reconnect it, or even sometimes if it reboots after a software update, and it's hard to figure out what's going on exactly... it seems that once it's "offline" it's impossible to actually manage it from the app, even when you're connected directly to its Wi-Fi. I can't reboot it when it's offline, and in fact I can't even change it to use a static IP, as it refuses to save any settings at all — it's like the app is showing the last known settings but not actually communicating with the Eero, so it's extremely frustrating. 

I think this may be why it still seems to be showing the old IP address, simply because the Eero app isn't actually reading the new settings — I rebooted my Bell Home Hub, and of course it got a new public IP, and according to its DHCP settings, it's even assigned it to the Eero, but the Eero refuses to connect to the Internet, and the app still shows the old static IP address, so it's hard to tell whether it's the app not showing the new settings or the Eero not actually updating itself with the new DHCP-assigned IP address that the HH3000 handed out. My guess is that it's the first scenario, since I can't save any changes to the configuration either — It seems as though the Eero app doesn't actually want to communicate directly with the Eero over Wi-Fi, but rather expects to work through Eero's cloud servers, so when Eero isn't connected, the app can't actually communicate with it properly. 

In the end, going through the following steps seems to fix it whenever this does happen:

1. On the Home Hub 3000, disable Advanced DMZ (you can leave the DMZ on, but uncheck the "Advanced DMZ" on the bottom. Be sure to click "Save" to confirm the change.
2. Soft Reset the Eero Gateway by pressing the reset button until the LED turns yellow and then releasing it.
3. When the Eero Gateway comes back, in should get an internal IP on whatever subnet the HH3K is configured to use.
4. Re-enable "Advanced DMZ" on the HH3K.
5. Reboot the HH3K (under Advanced->Resets->Restart)
6. Soft Reset the Eero Gateway again (hold reset until LED turns yellow and release)

In some cases, simply toggling advanced DMZ off and back on and then soft resetting the Eero makes it come back okay, but not always. The soft reset seems to force the Eero to pick up a new IP address, but it may need to pick up a different one (e.g. step #3) before it can come back to the original public IP. 

It's a convoluted process, and I have no idea why the Eero needs to go through this, but there's obviously an incompatibility with how the HH3K implements Advanced DMZ and what the Eero gateway wants to see. It's definitely a problem Eero needs to solve, however, as I've used at least five other routers from different brands with the Advanced DMZ feature on the HH3K and never had a problem with any of those.

One of these days when I have some time to kill, I may do a packet trace on the wire between the Eero Gateway and the HH3K to see if I can figure out what it is that the Eero is looking for in order to formally establish a connection, because it's obviously looking for something that no other router seems to care about.

As for speed tests, the Eero definitely hampers my download speeds — I get around 600Mbps maximum on my Gigabit Fibe connection — but what's weird is that upload speeds are actually fine at just under 1Gbps (which is what I'd expect considering it's only got a Gigabit Ethernet port). For my purposes, I don't really care as my Wi-Fi speeds aren't going to be any better than that on 802.11ac anyway — even with my 802.11ax Netgear router, only my Wi-Fi 6 capable devices (iPhone 11 Pro Max and 2020 iPad Pro) even got close to those speeds, and that's when they were sitting right next to the router. I've dual-homed my MacBook, with my Wi-Fi connected to the Eero and my Ethernet connection going directly to the Home Hub 3000 so I can ensure maximum download speeds. 

So just to close the loop on my comments above, I finally decided that the frustrations with Bell's "Advanced DMZ" weren't worth the headaches, since even though it's as fine 98% of the time, it was always that 2% that would potentially trip me up.

So I decided to simply assign the Eero to the "standard" DMZ, effectively creating a double NAT scenario — one where the Eero's "public" IP address is actually assigned by the Bell router on its own private subnet.

However, for me it's been working flawlessly in that configuration for several weeks now, with no problems at all dealing with routing traffic in and out — inbound Plex Media Server connections are all good, and even FaceTime, Skype, Zoom, and VoIP calls work fine, as do outbound OpenVPN tunnels. Don't get me wrong, double NAT was once a huge PITA, but most of the protocols that once had a problem with it were updated to deal with multiple layers of NAT years ago. To be fair, I've known that for a while, but I"ve also been doing this long enough that I'm still nervous from the "bad old days" of VPN and VoIP/video services that just couldn't cope with it. 

In fact, the biggest problem with most "double NAT" configurations is that you have to set up port forwarding on two routers if you want to let in inbound services, but that's mitigated by using the normal DMZ feature on the Bell router, since that will automatically forward all inbound traffic to the Eero's private IP address, at which point it doesn't really matter whether it's using a public IP or a "DMZ" private IP.

jerrylion NAT, or Network Address Translation, is what allows multiple devices inside your network to share a single public IP address. In essence, everything on your home network has a different IP — usually something like 192.168.1.x — however your router has one public IP address that the rest of the internet sees. NAT basically translates those internal addresses to the single external address, while keeping an internal table of which addresses are going where so the return traffic from the internet can be mapped back to the proper internal IP addresses. 

It's a slightly convoluted examples, but you can think of it like the mail room in a large office. When you send out mail from a company, you only put the company's address on it, and it goes out through the mail room, which keeps a log of which pieces of mail went out. When somebody sends a reply, it arrives at the mail room, and they know which desk to deliver it to internally. 

Double NAT basically just means that this is happening twice. Since the Eero doesn't support PPPoE, it can't get its own public IP address from your DSL router, so it gets a private IP just like any other computer would have gotten directly from that router before you put in the Eero. However, now if you have devices connected to the Eero instead of your main DSL router, they're going to get yet another private IP address, so the Eero has to translate that to its "public" address (which is still a private address on the outer network), and then your DSL router has to translate that again to the real public IP address.

In practical terms, this adds a small amount of network latency (which is negligible for most people's needs — it's something you'd likely only care about if you're a serious online gamer), but it also makes it harder for certain services to work across both routers. Making VPN connections is probably one of the big challenges with double NAT, but some online games can have issues as well, and it's much more difficult to open ports into your internal network when you want to do things like sharing remote access to your computers. However, for everyday browsing and surfing, it should make no difference at all.

If you do need to share internal services, you can mitigate some of this by using the standard "DMZ" feature on your main DSL router and pointing it to the IP address of the Eero. This has the effect of taking all inbound traffic and sending it to the Eero. You'll still be using two layers of NAT, so it won't eliminate all of the challenges, but it does mean that things like VoIP services and online games that want to open ports into your network via things like UPnP should be able to work properly, plus if you want to share something like a file server or media server with the outside world, you'll only need to configure the port forwarding on the Eero itself, rather than having to set up port forwarding in both places. 

messenger 

I do not have the definitive answer for you but my search on the Google Support pages shows that PPPoE is supported on both Google Wifi and its successor Nest. There are queries over the implementation of IPv6 working with PPPoE and Google's response is to say that the issue was fixed by their firmware update in August 2018. The PPPoE setting is available in their apps WAN settings page. It seems that support for PPPoE has been there for some years if not from the outset. 

However there is some evidence that users have struggled to use IPv6 and PPPoE together, perhaps there are some settings issues on the users' set up. 

Toddyfunk 

About a year ago eero support posted this on the thread above: Since PPPoE requires a fundamentally different firmware structure, there are a lot of challenges implementing it into a system like eero. 

Perhaps they  are still looking at their options but it does not seem a priority for them. Maybe a major firmware update might mean that it would not be backwards compatible. Why they designed the product in this way is a question for the original designers I guess.

Alan 
I must disagree. The firmware structure does not need to change. The firmware needs the ability to send PPPoE authentication at interval. This standard is rather old and well documented. The only challenge is the willingness to implement the feature. 

sjeffries 

I was only copying and pasting eero's earlier response. I do not know who is right or who is telling us the whole story. All I do know is that, without PPPoE authentication support, set up seems too difficult for the average user and possibly some of eero's features would be lost. So I will not be buying the eero as I wanted (unless of course they do implement the necessary support!).

Alan I agree completely. I am also rather frustrated by lack of support for PPPoE. This has complicated my home solution and made it slow and less reliable. It would be nice if the telephone companies would modernize their authentication infrastructure and deprecate PPPoE, but I that I fear would take an act of God. There are too many telco's around the globe that still require the protocol.

Alan honestly. I am not looking for a response from a member. I'm looking for a response from Eero or at the very least add my name to the long list of users looking for this functionality. But it's looking like I just need to migrate to a different router as I doubt anything comes from this old topic...

PPFS I hope so.  Can someone confirm? I will preorder right away if so.

BigValen verified

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