46eero Labs features and feedback thread
Welcome to the eero Labs features and feedback thread!
Here is your place to share your experiences with new eero Labs feature releases, as well as let us know the types of future concepts you'd like to see here. We encourage you to share your feedback and interact with others, as well as have an opportunity to interact directly with our developers.
While this section will be more focused on connectivity related features, you can also submit general feature requests here.
For more on eero Labs, visit the eero help center.
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I have changed over to the new BETA systems on my EERO and noticed that when I have selected the Local DNS Caching - that when I tried to access the internet on my laptops that I've been blocked and have no connection - telling me that my DNS has an issue. Is there something I need to change on my laptop browser software when I select this feature on EERO ?
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conigs try rebooting your laptops so that they get the new DNS server setting.
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conigs or just renew DHCP lease from laptop.
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Thanks that took care of it - problem solvedcMoo92
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I enabled all three eero Labs features. The only one that seems to cause me any issues is the Smart Queue Management. When I have SQM enabled it causes issues with the streaming of DIRECTV Now, to the point where it's almost unwatchable. It didn't seem to have an effect on any other streaming service, or with anything else that utilizes my network. I've turned SQM off for now. I got tired of hearing my other half say "FIX THIS TV!!!" DIRECTV Now is working flawlessly with SQM turned off.
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scots yea I have SQM disabled because it causes these types of issues with streaming from my Plex media server.
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cMoo92 I hadn't noticed any problems with anything other than DIRECTV Now. Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming seemed to work fine for me. I don't have Plex set up. With DIRECTV Now it would sometimes freeze up, then start back up in about 15 to 20 seconds. But more frequently it would freeze, then a message would come up about an issue with the network, and it wouldn't start back up until we either selected the same channel we had been watching or changed to a different channel. Sometimes it would happen only a couple times an hour, and sometimes it would happen about every 5 minutes. Pretty annoying. Working perfectly since I turned off SQM.
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Are there any thoughts on supporting 802.11mc?
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I'm not sure that DNS caching is respecting the custom DNS settings (OpenDNS) that I have under v.3.9.1-3, as I notice with DNS caching enabled, instead of returning the expected NXDOMAIN response for a failed lookup I'm directed to my ISP's hijacked DNS search assistance page (Verizon FIOS) which would indicate it's just taking the ISP's provided DNS entries.
Disabling caching, when the dhcp lease sets my custom DNS entries a failed lookup returns the expected NXDOMAIN response
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Thanks for sharing your experience tangaroa and welcome to the Community!
As local DNS caching – and all eero Labs features – are still technically in beta development, we're eager for any ways we can improve these functionalities. If you haven't yet, I strongly encourage you to email support@eero.com with the details of what you're seeing so we can coordinate further with our engineers and make sure everything is working as expected on your network. Please put "Community Feedback – DNS Caching" or similar in the subject line and I'll make sure one of our senior specialists follows up with you further!
Kindly,
Drew, eero Community Team
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I know the content blocking is not in the Labs section but this seemed to be the best place to talk about ad blocking since it is in beta.
It is great! I love this feature, but it has caused me issues on CBS.com because it blocks the commercials so you can’t watch the shows. Would it be possible to add a while list to this feature?
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Omg..it’s either band steering or smart que keeps crashing my whole system under heaving streaming load...ugh. It had happened several times and rebooting system is a real pisser
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I would like to see two things added to the Eero functionality.
1. Provide a numerical value for the signal strength for each beacon location (not just the bars).
2. Allow users to select a particular beacon location and run a speed test versus an overall network speed test.
Thanks,
TD
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Local DNS Caching work? I am running into a problem and want a better understanding of how this works.
do individual hosts on the network contribute to the local DNS cache? For instance if I edit a hosts file on a local machine and that machine locally resolved the Hosts file value vs the DNS value. Does that get added to the Local DNS cache for the network?
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Carterbunch I don’t know how local DNS caching works on eero, but I’m 134.78% positive that it’s not using any of the devices on your network to cache lookups. If you manually edit the host file, only that single machine is going to look at its own host file.
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Thanks for sharing your question with us Carterbunch!
So, concerning the local DNS caching, it's quite simple and straightforward – when a device makes a request to the WAN, the DNS request goes the gateway IP address. The gateway eero sends out the request to be resolved by a DNS server, and then caches the result locally. When any device on the network attempts to resolve the domain again, the gateway can serve up the record instead of sending out a DNS request again.
If a device has custom DNS configured locally, or for any other reason doesn't ask the gateway to resolve DNS for it, then the eero won't cache the results of that device's DNS requests, and will simply pass through the traffic to the WAN.
Hope this information is helpful for you! If you have any other questions or concerns, please let me know, give us a call at 877-659-2347 or email support@eero.com and we'd be happy to assist further!
Kindly,
Drew, eero Community Team -
Hi @Drew,
After enabling Local DNS Caching in the Eero Labs test area I noticed that my TiVo Roamio no longer connects to the TiVo service to download guide data.
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So I have been trying Band-Steering the last week; and ran into some problems.
My DLink Water Sensors: DCH-S160 units; will not connect consistently in this setup. As soon as I turn off Band-Steering they connect again, with no problem.-
ebonovic Those are probably 2.4GHz only devices. Band-steering is a tricky technology, even outside of eero, and it's not terribly uncommon for some 2.4GHz devices to fail to connect when band-steering is enabled on an access point.
I personally don't run band steering on my eero network. It's a nifty idea, but I don't have any problems with it off, so it's not worth it to me to risk creating issues.
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Eero Labs features have certainly impressed me and my uses on the network however it should be noted that I was able to narrow down an issue with Smart Queue Management causing issues with “Hey Siri” enabled devices communicating and responding. Where HomePod is meant to take over in most cases, the devices would just quit trying as if they all assumed the other device would complete to request. Turning off Smart Queue Management resolve the issue after trying some other solutions.
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Chad Mobley interesting. I have 4 Homepods but can’t say I’ve had any problems. Hm.
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Thanks for sharing your concerns with SQM, Chad Mobley – I haven't heard that interaction happening before, so this sounds like something we'd certainly like to look into further. Would you mind shooting an email to support@eero.com with my name and/or "Community Forums" in the subject line, and include the details of the steps you've tried so far, and the extent of the Siri/HomePod issue as you've seen it? Once we have your email, I'll make sure it gets to a specialist who can help you out!
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, and we look forward to hearing from you soon!
Kindly,
Drew, eero Community Team -
Chad Mobley I have multiple HomePods and do not see this behavior either. One think to keep in mind is that all of your iOS and MacOs devices should have bluetooth active. Apple uses bluetooth in its devices to communicate with each other when multiple devices hear "Hey Siri" to determine which device should respond. Hope this helps.
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I would like to be able to see what the eero firewall has blocked, how many attempts have bounced off the firewall, etc. Does eero Plus enhance the firewall?
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ringlej no, eero Plus won’t give you any additional visibility into the firewall or incoming requests that have been blocked.
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Eero Labs request (that turns into regular feature).. I would really like to see an overall ISP network bandwidth usage when in the App. This would be multi-faceted, and allow to see in one view a list of all active devices and their current external internet usage since a certain time. Ideally, there would be a way to filter 'WAN usage since X date". Also a global few of WAN usage since a date.
Thanks!-
Hi, mtward – thanks for sharing your suggestion, and welcome to the Community! This is actually one of our more popular requests, so I encourage you to check out the main request thread we have here and vote on it! Whether this is something we integrate into eero Labs or add as a full-fledged feature, we definitely appreciate your thoughts. We're glad to have you here as a Community member, and we look forward to your valuable insights going forward!
Kindly,
Drew, eero Community Team
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Hey guys, brand new eero user here. So far loving the mesh wifi, even though it is prob overkill for my 750sq ft apt, ha. It is an old building with lots of plaster, lots of competing neighbors' wifi, and the floor plan is like a long railway car... my old (very good) Asus router couldn't get a reliable signal to the far end with the kitchen, bathroom and laundry area, even on 2.4ghz. Since installing the eero gateway by the modem and setting up one beacon in the kitchen, I have flawless wifi coverage everywhere, and to my delight, getting the FULL speed of my connection, even in the farthest reaches of the apt.
One thing regarding eero labs features: I toggled on all three beta features the other day, and noticed that SQM seemed to slow speeds (according to speedtest.net) on all my devices by about 10%. When I turned the feature off, speeds immediately returned to the full strength they were before. I prob don't need SQM anyway, but just thought I'd add this here.
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timd If your ISP is providing speeds over 500 Mbps down, SQM is not necessary. If you are not at 500 Mbps, turn it on. The speed hit you see is SQM working. It will not allow a single device to "hog" all the available bandwidth...so it saves a bit (that 10% you see) just in case another device hops on and needs some bandwidth. I am explaining this in extraordinarily simplistic terms...but if you look around, in-depth SQM explanations are sprinkled all across the site.
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I'd like to be able to install a VPN on the router so that all traffic is handled by the VPN rather than just the traffic on which I have installed a VPN app.
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hthm2 very true. Would be nice to have it network-wide. Closest is eero Plus, kind kinda but not kinda.
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The local dns caching has been nothing but a huge problem. Especially with apple products, it seems. My HomePods occasionally become unresponsive. Same with Apple TV. Turning off local dns always fixes things.
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jonbirge sorry to hear about that. Can’t say I have any of those problems here. Full Mac home. Everything seems to work just fine, with all the beta features enabled, and eero Plus. Wondering if there is something else not playing right there....
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jonbirge I have 5 MacBook Pros, 2 iMacs, 4 Apple TVs, 4 IPads, several iPhones and 2 HomePods, all with local DNS caching on. No issues here. I am sorry to hear you are having issues.
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I'm uploading about 30 GBs to my iCloud drive today. Internet access of all types on all the other devices on my network was a miserable experience this morning. On a whim, I turned on Smart Queue Management. The improvement was drastic and immediate. All other device network access returned to normal. Streaming video from the Apple TV was no longer an adventure in spinning loading icons. And my cloud upload is soldiering onward at nearly the same upload rate (right around the max advertised by my ISP) as before.
Three cheers for Smart Queue Management!
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Prioritizing and throttling bandwidth (especially on the guest network) would be very useful in my network.
Also I need to be able to shut down guest automatically at night.
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Please go a step beyond band steering and add eero steering: the mesh steers each client to the eero with the strongest signal. The current state permits a client to connect to a strong signal, move to the edge of that device’s range, and stay connected with a weak signal. Eero should instead push that client to another access point.
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I’m having trouble with my Sonos app seeing the device as not on the same network. I think this is because it’s not on the 5G wireless which is what the phone is using. How do I ‘steer’ it to 5G or the phone to the one it’s on?
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Jerry Sonos speakers only connect via 2.4GHz. But having your Sonos speakers on 2.4GHz and your phone on 5GHz isn't the problem (I know because I have about eight Sonos speakers in my house). I would recommend disabling Band Steering on your eero network if you have it enabled, as it might be causing the Sonos speakers to not be able to connect.
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cMoo92 I will probably disable the steering. Only turned it on in search of a solution. The problem went away after I disabled a WiFi connected eero unit. I can’t say that fixed it. Still working after plugging the unit in again. Thanks for your suggestion.
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I've been using OpenDNS with Eero for parental controls and see that my home generates about 400k lookups a month on average. I thought I'd try the beta dns caching feature to reduce that and improve performance. After turning it on, I see I am doing about 800k lookups / month with about half of them being a looking of cdn.samsungcloudsolution.com. It looks like that lookup is not working and so my Samsung TV retries over and over. Any advice?
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Looking at the DNS caching, this doesn't seem to work at all. Firstly, clients still get two DNS addresses: one of the Eero gate itself, and the other of my ISP. So only some queries (that would be pointed to the gate would be cached) but even that's not the case: I tried little bash script dnstest which should show significantly faster response time second time around for cached queries, but that's not the case. In fact, appears slower than my ISP's DNS on 176.52.219.3...
(192.168.4.1 is Eero gateway).
test1 test2 test3 test4 test5 test6 test7 test8 test9 test10 Average
cloudflare 18 ms 19 ms 16 ms 20 ms 30 ms 19 ms 24 ms 20 ms 22 ms 15 ms 20.30
176.52.219.3 18 ms 22 ms 18 ms 18 ms 17 ms 19 ms 16 ms 39 ms 18 ms 21 ms 20.60
192.168.4.1 21 ms 58 ms 27 ms 36 ms 29 ms 21 ms 20 ms 27 ms 24 ms 32 ms 29.50
norton 28 ms 33 ms 46 ms 26 ms 28 ms 31 ms 27 ms 27 ms 29 ms 27 ms 30.20
comodo 32 ms 50 ms 35 ms 29 ms 24 ms 28 ms 30 ms 41 ms 29 ms 30 ms 32.80
google 23 ms 34 ms 41 ms 37 ms 41 ms 40 ms 25 ms 37 ms 21 ms 43 ms 34.20
level3 35 ms 35 ms 29 ms 34 ms 27 ms 28 ms 27 ms 28 ms 27 ms 98 ms 36.80
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Tried the new WPA3 support, but found that devices were constantly falling off the network. When I attempted to disable, several of my Eeros got stuck in a red light mode. After waiting 10-15 minutes, I pulled the plug on each and the network came back up. Then I went back into the app and found WPA3 still enabled. I disabled a second time and the slider now has stayed off. Looks like this might be a little too bleeding edge for my network when we're all working at home.
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WPA-3 setting kicked my AppleTV3rd Gen off the network. I had to disable to get the AppleTV back on the network.
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melliott yes, ATV 3rd gen does not support WPA3 and Apple won’t be able to update it as the WIFI hardware won’t support it either (does have processing power for the encryption).
Time to upgrade that ATV man.
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microChasm
microChasm said:
Time to upgrade that ATV manSuch a wasteful way of looking at things. It’s not dead so why discard it? FYI: this can be repurposed as a hub to make non-airplay studio monitors Airplay(1) enabled
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Was unable to register my Whistle (GPS dog collar) with WPA3 enabled. Once disabled, registration worked like a champ. See a couple other comments about WPA3 so will keep disabled for now.
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I enabled band steering and immediately got problems with all my Chromecast devices including the Google Home Mini (Every device with Chromecast technology). All of them had connection to the network and internet but I couldn't stream anything to the devices when my phone or tablet were connected to the same AP (I have 7 Eero newest generation in my Home). When my phone switches to another AP there is no problem.
When band steering is of everything works fine.
Btw keep up the good work!
