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eero pro - release and renew dynamic public IP address?

Hello,

I have been relatively happy with my eero pro system but there are times when I wish I had just a little bit more control over the configuration and operation of it.  This is one of those times.

I am able to configure my ISP's cable modem to operate in 'bridge mode' (in case it's relevant).

Since I haven't contracted with my ISP to have a static IP address, I get a new dynamically-assigned IP address every so often.  On occasion, I get bad luck and get a dynamically-assigned IP address that is on cloudflare's "naughty list", which means that from one day to the next (from one external IP address to the next) I suddenly am faced with having to answer a CAPTCHA challenge on almost every website I visit.

This continues until I am able to get a new external IP address assigned, which I have to go through several trial-and-error gyrations of rebooting or resetting my cable modem, and rebooting or resetting my eero gateway.  Eventually I stumble across some magic combination and voila, I get a new external IP address dynamically assigned from my ISP and all of the CAPTCHAs go away and life resumes it normal course.

What I'd like to do is to find out how to force my eero gateway to release and renew its external IP address from my ISP.  I'm so frustrated with this, it's happened several times over the past year and each time it's so exhausting to get out of...  Today I tried calling them to see if it was something they could release and renew on their end, but I got someone on the phone who didn't know an IP address from their phone number, so there was absolutely no help there.

Please, for the love of all that's good and holy, eero, can you tell me how to do this?  

Since I'm in bridge mode, the IP address assigned from the ISP is triggered by my eero gateway asking for one; it seems that the cable modem really is just a pass-through communication enabler here, and the requesting, holding, and releasing is all done by the eero gateway, right?

Thanks!

24 replies

    • cMoo92
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    This isn’t something you or eero has control over. Your modem is simply requesting an IP address from the ISP’s DHCP server. It’s up to the DHCP server as to what IP it will hand out. Normally, it will keep handing out the same one, but it all depends on the DHCP server configuration on the “aging” of the IP address. Even doing a release/renew on your end will result in you getting the same IP most likely.

      • joytoworld
      • 3 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      cMoo92 The modem may request a new IP based after a specific lease period, but the lease periods for most IPS's are usually a year or longer.  My Eero is requesting this new public IP almost on a weekly basis and this was never a problem with my previous router.  It's the Eero that's doing the request, not the modem.   To be clear, I replaced a Netgear router, which held the SAME public IP for years,  with the Eero router which now changes it weekly.  I may have to give up on the Eero and return to Netgear if they can't correct this. 

      I have 2 ISP accounts.  The other ISP account still has an old Netgear router and has had the same public IP for 2 years.  So this is NOT the ISP nor the modem updating the lease.

    • pinthea
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Your comment:

    >> Even doing a release/renew on your end will result in you getting the same IP most likely.

    ... is exactly what my original post is about -- that I do NOT have the ability to request this via my eero in its current capabilities. 

    Within my own network, almost any connected client device has the ability to release its assigned DHCP address and request a new one.  All I am asking for is the ability to do this at a "macro level" -- from the ISP's perspective, where eero gateway is the client to my ISP's DNS server, to release and request a renewal.  Surely this is possible. 

    I'm OK releasing the public IP address and then waiting a bit for renewal, to hopefully get a different one.  That would make all the difference in this case.

    eero doesn't give the consumer the ability to release or renew.  Hence my ask.

    You may not appreciate the need for this ask -- so just wait until you get assigned via your ISP's DHCP server a public IP address that is blacklisted with CloudFlare, and then you're having to answer CAPTCHA questions ("select every car", "select every bus", "select every crosswalk", "select every stop light") every time you visit most websites.  Worse, some web services will not work for you because of the intervening CAPTCHA authentication "are you human?" that silently causes problems...  Only when you stumble across the random series of events which results in a renewed DHCP public IP address that is NOT CloudFlare blacklisted is all right with the world again...  The struggle is real, folks.

    • pinthea
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    FYI, other router manufacturers enable this by allowing you to change the MAC address of the router.  Once applied, it triggers a renewal of public IP address from the ISP because the "client" (the router) looks like a new client.  Linksys, for example, allows you to manually edit your MAC address but also to "clone" it from your PC.  I do not believe eero provides the ability for a customer to change the MAC address of any of its mesh nodes, esp. of the gateway unit.  This is ONE way they could accomplish it, its how other manufacturers do.

    • pinthea
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    In thinking about it, I suppose one way I could do it would be to delete my eero network, switch out which of my nodes is to be the gateway, and set it back up again.  That way another MAC address would be coming through in the public DHCP IP request and I'd (in theory) get assigned a different public IP address.  So it would seem that there's a manual workaround that would require me to nuke my eero config each time this is required.

      • cMoo92
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea you don’t have to delete your network to change gateways. Literally all you have to do is physically switch the eeros around. They automatically handle the rest.

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      cMoo92 hello I am interested in waiting to buy a new eero in the future, such as the wife 6e or plus model. I hope it is launched in a few months. I also wanted to ask to change your external public IP on the eero can you just switch back and forth physically of the eero nodes to get a new IP each time? Or will it for for example node 1 and node 2 will result into only 2 different IPs instead of various different ones each time? I am curious because I believe that being able to change your external IP is very important. 

      • pinthea
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      cMoo92 FYI, I didn't experience that.  When I tried it, I had a broken network.

    • pinthea
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Thanks, cMoo92.  Good to know. I didn't know I could just juggle the eero units around and they'd figure themselves out.  Might have to try that the next time I get assigned a bum IP address!

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea did it work?

    • pinthea
    • 2 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Matt Not in the way that I think I expected based on what was said above.  What I had hoped would happen is that if I unplugged the gateway from the modem and plugged in one of the other two non-gateway units to be a new gateway, and just connect the old gateway to power only, one would automagically understand "Oh, now I'm the gateway!" and config itself as such, and similarly the former-gateway that is now not connected to the modem would say "Oh, now I'm no longer the gateway!" and configure itself as such; basically the whole system would dynamically configure itself accordingly.  That is not what happened when I tried it...  

    What did work with less hassle that completely deleting and recreating the entire eero network was that I moved the ethernet cable that connected the gateway unit to the cable modem from one of the gateway's ports to the other (then power-cycled everything including the modem).  That caused a new external IP address to be assigned, when doing this without switching ethernet ports would not have.  So that was what I needed.  Switching ethernet ports on the eero gateway apparently changed the MAC address involved in the dynamic IP address assignment process so my ISP saw it as a new client and issued a new IP (reserving the bad IP address for the previous MAC address for some period of time until that old reservation expired).

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea thanks for letting me know. Based on research that I did I think that I might buy the ASUS Zen WiFi Mesh System. It seems to have the best configs and have functionality to change mac address when ever you want. Thanks for the information.

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea nevermind after looking into ASUS mesh WiFi a bit more many people say the software is glitchy and needs a weekly reboot. I want to invest into a perfect mesh system with zero compromise. I have not found that system yet. Eero was close but not being able to change your external IP is what makes me think twice about it.

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea also by switching ethernet ports on the same eero router many times, will it only give you two different IP’s since there are only two ethernet ports or continuously lease out a new external public IP by just switching the port on the eero? I am just confused how something like this can work? If so this is a game changer and pretty solid because if anything happens I would like to change my IP because it’s static and I change it usually by changing MAC address.

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea also what is your ISP because I use Comcast and I wonder if that same method for you will work for me?

      • pinthea
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Mateusz Honestly it doesn't matter.  This is about how my eeros behave when I tried to switch them around and have one become the gateway.  But, unless you pay for a static IP address, all ISP's deal with dynamic clients pretty much the same; it uses your MAC address to identify you and associate you with the IP address they most recently reserved for you.  Yes, two ports = 2 IP addresses, but only until the ISP releases the reservation on for the MAC address you're not using.  After some time (a day or two?) you can switch back to it, show up to them as a MAC address for which there is no reservation, and they will lease you another IP address from the pool of available values.

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea When you do get a new IP will you only have those same two IP’s forever or will they change?

      • pinthea
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Mateusz I think your question is answered in my above post.  But if not:
      https://lmgtfy.app/?q=How+does+DHCP+work
      also
      https://lmgtfy.app/?q=DHCP+lease+expiration

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea pinthea Wouldn’t the change in your DHCP only effect your internal IP address devices connected to your network?

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea  But basically what I was trying to say is since my IP address is a sticky dynamic, meaning that it is dynamic but it likes to hold on the same IP for as long as possible until a new one has to be leased out it can stay the same for months. But basically because of the eero functionality with changing the port every few days you can constantly obtain a new IP address correct by just swapping the port between the eero?

    • pinthea
    • 2 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    There are two different DHCP's at work -- one from the perspective of your ISP, giving your router a dynamic IP address on the WAN, and that's completely separate from what goes on inside of your network -- where your router gives out dynamic IP addresses to the devices INSIDE your own network on your LAN -- again, thanks to DHCP.  One doesn't impact the other, except for when your router gets a new IP via DHCP from the ISP, it might need to synch up your LAN devices network details with any new WAN details (DNS servers? not sure).  Really, most of your LAN clients typically use your router as the gateway and as the DNS server, so probably not much if anything really makes a WAN IP address change impactful on your LAN devices, the router does all of the. middle-man stuff there.

    I get what you mean by "sticky IP" but that's only because of your ISP's DHCP lease time, which makes and hold reservations by MAC address.  Once your MAC address doesn't show up for more than the lease time, the lease expires, and it will release the IP it's reserved for you on that MAC address back into the assignable pool.  Releasing it doesn't mean that you won't get it back -- it means it's available for ANYONE to get the next time someone unknown makes a DHCP request and it's selected as the one to be given out.  It could be to you, it could be to someone else.

    I'd recommend reading up on DHCP, it's pretty interesting stuff and you've clearly got more questions than I would have time to type out answers to...  Or ask these on a relevant reddit thread since they're not eero specific? 

    (It's not that common for someone to need to change their public IP address very often, usually that's because of downloading or hosting torrents or other (ahem) activities.  Just get a VPN...)


    Good luck!

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea Thanks for the input! Once I do get the next eero that comes out hopefully in a few months ( the WiFi 6e one ). I will how it goes. And also one last thing how was your experience with eero? And if it was good we’re you pleased with the range and speeds you are getting?

      • pinthea
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Mateusz Good enough for me to upgrade from the original eero Pro 3-pack to the eero 6 Pro 3-pack.  I've tried both Orbi and Velop in the past, and neither were very stable.  Eero just worked waaay more consistently.  Maybe eero isn't the fastest, but I'll take stability over bleeding edge speeds every day of the week.  They run a little warmer than I would like (you can find threads about this here) I was pleased with the support, too.

      • matty
      • 2 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      pinthea That’s amazing to hear! Yeah eero based on my research is very stable. Also gonna buy the new eero when it comes out. Eero will be releasing an Eero 6 plus and an Eero pro 6e. Which they will be much faster then it’s predecessor. I can’t wait to upgrade my household with the latest eero technology in the future.  I am expecting the new eero s to launch in mid or late 2022.

Content aside

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