eero Labs features and feedback thread

nutmac  thread isn’t Google. It’s the new standard for low powered IoT devices being adopted by the Matter alliance. (Google, Amazon and Apple will all support it.) There are several HomeKit devices that already use it, and the HomePod mini supports it too! Most new (and some old via firmware update) smart home devices will support it starting this year. 

nutmac Thread isnt google. its a consortium which many of the big players are moving to for home automation Along with Matter .. Interoperability is an important issue with home automation and this is an attempt to unify it... 

 Drgnfish  I use a VPN as well for work, Cisco AnyConnect, and I can still connect with SQM enabled.  Just providing another data point.   I would have to say my wife would be in heaven if your suggestion was implemented (although my kids would cry).

Drgnfish I also use a VPM for work and have no issues with SQM enabled.  However, I feel like there is a bit more latency now as I surf the web in general.  Entering a URL in the browser and hitting enter does not provide an immediate response indicating page loading.  There seems to be a one second, or less, pause before site starts loading.

Drgnfish the time limit per User is a standard feature on most of the routers with parent controls and half price of eero.  It was very disappointing to find out eero app was very limited.  So hopefully they are working on this as they are certainly  behind the curve.

Msada this feature was asked for 4years ago and still not available :(

diomark That’s weird.  It’s the last setting at the very bottom of the Network Settings list.  If the eero’s are in bridge mode, you won’t see the option.

carlsimmons81 yes, I'm bridged. (connecting to a Ubiquiti Networks edgerouter). Sad to hear this.

my network is not set to bridge mode, but I don’t know how my VPN works, it’s not Cisco so it might be harder to figure out the problem.  It’s a custom VPN that connects with a token app on my phone.

diomark I also discovered that the new advanced features won’t work under bridge mode. Was running Bitdefender Box under bridge but back to eero Plus now. I like the eero integration.  

diomark i was having weird issues with eero 6 pro in Bridge mode i have a ubiquiti as well. I moved to manual in for dhcp in gateway mode and all issues so far are resolved. I would like to see more router like options creep into eeto.

Drusito If you want to access Hulu, Amazon Prime, BBC, Netflix or any other channel, you can get PureVPN.

NCSUCPE I was able to complete an iCloud backup of iPhone X, iPad Pro 12.9 (2nd gen), and iPad Pro 9.7 on both iOS 11.4 beta 3 and 11.4 beta 4 with the SQM active on my network. 1st Gen Eero's.

The only difference that I can say for certain on my network, would be that I have content cache enabled on my MacBook Pro. However, iCloud backups do not store there as far as I am aware. I checked my cache folder and the most recently created files were three hours prior to conducting these tests. Hopefully, the algorithm behind the new feature will sort out your connection issue. As a side note, my ISP is Spectrum. 

Drusito I can reproduce this behavior on my iPhone X  my iPad Pro 10.5 on the same beta and it works fine.

TexBuck I’ve had the same experience with the ‘Optimize for  conferencing and gaming’ feature enabled.

microChasm Interesting. I’ve not run into trouble downloading tons of stuff on my PS4.

TexBuck I haven't had these issues with my Xbox but I have noticed that my Xbox downloads stuff rather stupidity though. For one it only downloads one thing at a time which my PS4 Pro downloads multiple games at the same time and the speeds it downloads at are always much higher than my Xbox. My Xbox sometimes downloads at 200+ mbps then it will drop way down to like 20 mbps for no reason at all then go back up. Sometimes I have to pause the download to get it to go back up again. It's very annoying especially when I've got a gigahertz internet service. Every single game should be downloading way faster than what they do. It's almost like Xbox is throttling my download speeds down. What's the point in paying for good internet if these stupid consoles throttle you down to nothing? I should really just get back into PC gaming and get my PC back up and going cause these consoles really suck in multiple different ways! 

atm0sphere814 Ditto - exactly. My setup doesn't allow for having the eero wifi routers NOT in bridge mode:( but some of these functionalities have nothing to do with nat/firewalls/etc..

Mike K I had the same experience with Band Steering, and like you it took a reboot (with the labs feature off) to resolve it. My eeros are in bridge mode.

mat OK. FWIW, my eeros are NOT in bridge mode. I have eero Plus features enabled.

Mike K I had same experience where Dlink camera on guest network does not connect with beam steering enabled. 

Still I’m loving the beta feature access Eero team. I’d love to see the ability to vpn back to my Eero from public WiFi if that is feasible. 

avanpelt I have 10 Nest cams. 6 are indoors and run at 5 GHz and never disconnect. The outdoor cams though are regulated to run at 2.4 GHz in Canada. I get the occasional disconnect from each of the outdoor cams even though none is more than 10-15 feet from an indoor Eero. 

I have band steering (and all the other eero Plus betas and features) running and the outdoor cams do disconnect randomly and occasionally, generally for a couple mins. 

avanpelt I saw this same behavior as well and left it on.  After about 1/2 a day, devices starting to connect to the strongest signal, i.e. the closest eero.  Just a FYI.

foo I had this exact problem. What made it worse for me is since the Eero automatically runs a speed test every night, if there was a test that resulted in a slow speed, the Eero would hold that slow speed until another speed test was run. 

It was driving me crazy as I, like you, did not initially think it was the Eero

joedaman88 If you have eero Plus engaged, some devices will still show your preferred dns. My Apple TV shows 1.1.1.1 too but it’s just because my modem has been pointed there. Everything is still sent through ZScaler no matter what. Perhaps they should add a screen explanation though. This seems to be a common question. 

cotedan87 I appreciate the input. I am not currently an eero Plus subscriber. 

joedaman88 I suppose LOCAL DNS is for "local" use in the Eero home system from what I understand and shouldn't affect what happens on the outside. Just another user here, but two heads are sometimes better than one to figure things out. :) 

cotedan87 Well, when I use Terminal inside of OS X and do a NSLOOKUP, it is asking google's ipv6 DNS for resolution 2001:4860:4860::8888.  This is the DNS that Spectrum is currently pushing down to me.  So I am not so sure that this feature is working correctly.  Maybe someone at eero can chime in?

joedaman88 cotedan87 it looks like the local dns caching now works correctly with the latest 3.9 firmware update.

mperu0608 might be the same issue I ran into. The way i fixed my issue was, while SQM is off, do a network speed test on the Eero  so that it registers the correct available bandwidth. Then turn SQM back on and test your speeds again both on the Eero and on a connect computer to see if that fixed your issue. 

foo Thanks for the suggestion.  That didn't work for me.  When I discovered the issue, I tried turning it on and off a handful of times.  Every time it was on, I got about 50% speed.  Immediately after turning it off, I was back to 100%.

mperu0608 I have all eero labs features on, as well as all eero Plus features enabled. The nightly eero speedtest shows approx what I should be getting from my isp. Eero tests are not done through Speedtest though. Speedtest.net results show half the upload speed I should be getting.

For now I have very stable results (once I removed 19 Lifx bulbs from my system and replaced them with Philips Hue). 

eero Labs and eero Plus fully enabled seem to be very stable for my 40 devices. 

cotedan87 That's interesting. I confirmed my speed decline through Eero's speed test, and also through speedtest.net . However, when I have Eero labs off, and I'm showing full speed through speedtest.net , I am still showing about 1/2 speed through Eero's app. It would seem like:

1) Eero's speed test in the app is not working for me

2) Eero labs is also not working for me

I have reset the system to see if that solves the problem, and it doesn't.  

mperu0608 yeah interesting indeed. 

My Nest Cams would be the first to notice low speeds and fluctuations, and so far, so good. I used to have random disconnects of the Nest cams running at 2.4 when I had those 19 Lifx bulbs, since removing them, all problems have disappeared. 

I think it’s less about pure speed but about how eero manages the traffic between devices and units, especially if you have lots of them. Transition between my 6 eeros is smooth so far.  Hope your issues get worked out  

cotedan87 Thanks

Turning off Eero labs resolved the speed issues for me.  Eero is looking into the app showing incorrect test results (but that doesn't affect my network so that's not a big deal).

mperu0608 sounds basic, try swapping Ethernet cable to gateway. 

joedaman88 That was worth a shot.  It didn't help, though. 🙁 

Thanks.

mperu0608 devil’s advocate question for you .... I used to think that speedtests were absolute measures of performance. Not an IT person here, but a heavy user of technology. Many of my IT colleagues have convinced me that speedtest.net etc are not the ultimate measures of how your network is performing.

Question is... is there any device on your network that isn’t performing well ? (friendly question)

cotedan87 Thanks for the thought.  The way I discovered this in the first place was I noticed a drop in performance of the network as a whole.

I did consider that speedtest.net is not possibly a surefire way of knowing if my network is performing, but it showed almost exactly the speed my router should output, so I liked that.

The speed test on the Eero app shows about 1/2 of that, which shouldn't be the case if my network is indeed performing the way it should.  

I had my ISP out to take a look at our network, and everything checks out.  

In summary, even though the app does not show my network performing at the speed I pay for, I do believe it really is (with Eero labs turned off anyway).  I think the bad speed test data in the app is something Eero can iron out.

Do your IT colleagues have a different service they like to use to test speeds?

mperu0608 good observation and not that different than mine. My network performs well though. I’m also running Mac beta Mojave so I like to live dangerously at times :).  Perhaps IT peeps can chime in on this convo. cMoo92  might have some wisdom on this. 

cotedan87 Haha! I'd run Mojave, but my wife would kill me because of the bugs and issues so I choose life. ;)

Thanks for your thoughts.

mperu0608 it’s worth the risk actually :)  I’ve had zero issues of stability, and my 2013 iMac with fusion drive is finally running APFS. I run mainly Safari, email, Word, PowerPoint etc but Mojave is as stable as was High Sierra before it, at least for me.  For a beta, it’s remarkably stable this time around. 

cotedan87 Good to know! Thanks!

mperu0608 I am a licensed marriage therapist if that helps in your decision for MacOS Mojave :).   

It’s been been very stable here.  Not sure what software your family runs but for me nothing has crashed or acted crazy with it. I like the APFS file system with my old fusion disk. Gives some comfort for an aging hard disk. 

cotedan87 hahaha! That’s mighty nice of you. 

The main reason is when I did it in the past I had small issues that stemmed into larger issues down the road. I bet it’s good, but I promised myself I would wait next beta. I’m just like you, though. I want to be using the newest and best. 😉 

mperu0608 it’s a dangerous habit isn’t it. But good. But dangerous. But good. 

cotedan87 mperu0608

speedtest.net has notoriously been one of the worst speed test services. Really any speed test that uses Flash is bad. Now that Speedtest.net uses HTML5 though, it seems, IMO, to be improved.

A personal favorite of mine for quick/easy download speed testing is Netflix’s fast.com .

Other reputable speed tests (which are mobile friendly too) are https://speedof.me/ and http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

cMoo92 Thanks much once again. All show relatively similar speeds although fast.com doesn't show UP. With Eero Plus am getting about half the upload speed (4-5 instead of 10) although I figure the DNS has to be filtered by Zscaler etc, so a bit slower. It hasn't presented any issues with my 10 Nest cams tho. Still have a bit of UP room to spare.

cMoo92 Thanks for your thoughts. 

cMoo92 I second speedof.me

stevebaker