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Why does my PC connect to my most distant eero?

I have three eero's in my house, all hard wired over cat5e/cat6 cable. The Gateway is in my basement, two floors below my PC. The PC itself is a few meters away from an eero in the same room and with line of sight to the PC itself (and its wifi antenna).

All three eeros are up to date and working perfectly according to the eero app.

However, the PC keeps connecting at only 2.4ghz, and when I check the eero app, it tells me that the pc is connected to the basement (gateway) eero, which is two floors away. The signal is perfect, but throughput is slower than it should be because 2.4ghz vs 5ghz.

Is this a known issue, that a device connects at 2.4ghz to a vastly inferior station?

Many thanks!

5 replies

    • cMoo92
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    It’s up to your device to choose which AP and which signal band to connect to—it’s not an eero issue. eero can’t force it (band steering in eero Labs can sometimes fix this, but band steering can also cause problems).

    Couple suggestions:

    1. Are you sure your wireless card in your computer supports 5Ghz? It’s most likely that it does, but just something to confirm.

    2. Check to see if the manufacturer  for your wireless card has a newer version of the driver.

    • mrpetrov
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Thanks cMoo92, I appreciate the response!

    1. My wifi card does indeed support 5ghz - it's a brand new high end mobo, the wifi is 2x2 dual band 

    2. I have the latest drivers, and I've double checked. It has connected at 5ghz before, albeit briefly.

    Any other ideas? This isn't the first device in our house that connects to a distant eero. 

    The issue isn't so much that it connects at 2.4ghz (that's a function of the eero station it's joining) - the main issue is that it's joining an eero two floors away when the one a few meters away with line of sight is ignored. That, to me, sounds like a problem with the eero that's just a few meters away...?

      • Fan of tinkering with new hardware. Canadian dude.
      • cotedan87
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      mrpetrov what kinds of green bars are you getting for those particular devices ? I have about 40 devices.  Some connect to their nearest eeros, while others connect further away. I’m getting good bars on all, so it doesn’t matter where they connect. I do hear what you’re saying about 2.4 vs 5 ghz tho. 

      Sometimes I’ll reboot a device if I want to attempt a connection to a closer eero though. Sometimes it works.  

      • mrpetrov
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      cotedan87 Hi mate, thanks for the reply. I actually sort of worked out a semi way around this - I forced my wifi adapter on my desktop to use only a/n/ac wifi (ie not b/g/n or any combo thereof) - that seemed to force my desktop to at least use the 5ghz eero - albeit it is still connected to the eero in the basement (2/5 bars). I've no idea why it won't connect to the eero a few meters away from it though!

      The eero app shows it having a 2/5 bar connection, while the wifi bars on the desktop are at a full 5/5. Weird or is this normal?

    • Steve1963
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    It might be connecting to your gateway first because that's the first eero normally online when you start up your system.  You could turn your PC's wireless off and back on, or reboot your PC and see if it attaches to the eero near it, usually works for me.  My PC's always connect to 5GHz rather than 2.4.  What kind of wireless card does your PC have?  Also, do other devices connect to the eero that your PC seems to not want to use?  You could delete and re-add that eero, and then turn your PC's wireless off and back on, and see if it helps.

Content aside

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