Eero Pro 6E and Eero 6 Review: Fast and Easy
evanmccann.net
evanmccann.net
- There is no SNMP.
- There is no decent network monitoring at all: on the app, or available via the API, if you were to use one of the unofficial API libraries off of GitHub. At all. I've put significant effort into this and ultimately routed the Eero through a dedicated VLAN on my network switch, and have a SPAN port up to do traffic monitoring and analysis via a Linux box.
- The (iOS) app is pretty flakey when it comes to syncing the state of the router vs what you see in the app. Eg. you'll have a device paused in the app, but it's not actually paused on the router and vice versa. You end up having to toggle it a couple times until the settings are synced properly.
- The CEO/founder and engineers hang out in a certain subreddit and are communicative about the underlying technology. I get a strong sense they care deeply about their product -- with the caveat that they are entirely focused on the non-technical consumer market.
I still use Eero, because it's the best I've found for dealing with kids and Internet use. If I didn't have kids, I'd just do OPNsense on a Protectli mini-computer.
However, I do wish it had battery and 4G backup. I know that sounds pretty niche, but nowadays with regular consumer security cameras, alarm systems, smoke detectors, thermostats, etc. all running on WiFi with built-in battery backups, it would be very nice if I could still connect to them all if the power or internet drops out.
Interestingly my Ring alarm has battery and 4G backup, and that's also owned by Amazon. Supposedly there's a Ring Alarm Pro Base Station which is a sort of Eero/Ring hybrid device, but that doesn't exist in the UK, and is equivalent to the non-Pro Eero anyway.
I might add a Firewalla Gold and a UPS, but it's a lot of hassle and negates some of the value of Eero.
To jump off your point, if people want zero hassles and zero insight into traffic, an Eero Secure subscription is worthwhile, otherwise you're better served by using NextDNS.io or something reputable.
NextDNS is dirt cheap, and if set up right, provides you with per-device traffic logs.
Eg. they are not going to add SNMP, no matter how many times you ask.
This isn't a slam about CEO Nick and co., it's just not their market focus.
https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/207621056-How-do-...
https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000825206-What...
Part of the problem is that there are three different ways to pause a user (by pausing an individual MAC, pausing a group that the MAC lives in, or the group's bedtime going active). And they overlap in some unknown pattern, which the app can't track well.
Management of our children's devices (both content and screen time) is incredibly simple with profiles. Even their security features have come a long way and provide significant value to us.
I always recommend Eeros to any of our friends or family looking for networking suggestions.
That has been our experience with a fleet of the original eeros and, for the past year or so, eero 6s. And that's in a relatively large urban home with many devices and lots of nearby networks. Our setup currently uses a wired backhaul, which helps with speed, but the wireless backhaul worked pretty well, too.
Also, for what it's worth, no hardware issues across the 8 or so eeros total (1st gen and 6) that we've had.
The Eero is the only wireless hardware I've purchased in my life that was easy to setup and doesn't need to be rebooted every month. Plus, all the pieces in the whole mesh are still working well after the warranty period is over.
more than once now, i’ve been up late doing some work and had my whole network drop out without notice or explanation. it turned out to be from the eero doing a update. they say they do this because of liability from security vulnerabilities, or something, but it is supremely annoying.
The most convenient thing is that placing one of the Eeros next to my desktop meant that I could run ethernet to it; I thought that this would be awful because of the wifi hop in between but surprisingly I had very consistent ~20ms ping (iirc).
Sharing in case you've got HomePods, but one caveat about the simplicity is that their client steering feature / setting bundles both the band switching and station switching behaviors. I have 6 original HomePods and they can't handle the band switching at all — they will constantly drop out and fail to AirPlay. The issue is not unique to Eero, but unfortunately with client steering off I'm stuck toggling wifi when I move through my apartment on my laptop or phone.
The issue with the HomePods is certainly an Apple bug (reported to them several times in great detail after hours of debugging) but naturally they don't care to support their $350 "hobby".
FWIW, I have a pair of HomePods and haven’t noticed any issue with them dropping off the network, when enabling band steering.
I'm pretty sure there's something physically wrong with the U6-Mesh as it gets scolding hot in use and seems to throttle between 30-300mbps. I ended up reverting back to the Wifi 5 APs while I figure out what to do.
Did you ever notice your U6-Mesh running hot like really in an alarming way?
Only thing missing is good QoS —- the “SQM” they advertise doesn’t work nearly as well as true SQM on OpenWRT. In fact I was never really able to see Eeros SQM doing anything on multiple connection types.
Had a OpenWRT box as well, and shaping with CAKE was night and day better. Trick is I can't remotely manage OpenWRT for family. Eero is so much better for that. (so stable I don't have to manage it, it just works)
I agree they need for knobs, but that doesn't seem likely.
(The review mentions this, but only in passing, near the end of the very long first page.)
My single annoyance with them has been that the router will, without warning or the ability to wave it off, occasionally install updates at ~ 2-3 AM PST. Which is probably fine for most people, but is often in the middle of my workday. There's no apparent ability to override or change this.
As someone who just spent a bunch of time trying to read and get comparisons on a 6e setup, I think my biggest complaint is that it's testing against older models.
The ASUS ET8 and Deco XE5300 are closer 6E comparison devices than the models tested. I believe both would probably outperform, one of which being half the price.
They try to phone home like crazy and use their own DNS servers, so I just blocked them from accessing the network unless I want to do an update, which I unblock it for a bit and then re-block traffic. I got them to compete against my entire apartment complex screaming at 2 & 5 GHz and they've done the job.
I kept my expectations tempered with this because I just want wifi to work and no have to mess with it. I eventually plan on getting a couple Unifi APs to replace them if Amazon does anything really stupid with the product.
No idea what usage of that feature is like, but there’s a lot of chatter about it on r/eero, mostly positive. That subreddit is probably more technical than the average eero user though.
Happy to have seen both cake and fq_codel stablize in mikrotik in the past month: https://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=179307
I'll be first in line to purchase a new set if they offer a model that supports PoE here in Europe.
Disclaimer: I've done a bunch of work with the Eero team from 2015/2016 til present day. Their team has an extremely high concentration of very smart and talented people, they are great to work with.
But you could just plug the 2.5 port into a switch connected to a router, no? Surely the eero doesn't have to be your router?
> This is a limitation of the Qualcomm chipset eero are using, which can’t provide 2.5 Gbps connectivity on both ports.
> — this is the case on the Orbi RBK960, Asus ZenWifi ET8, Linksys Atlas Max 6E, Deco X90, and many others.
The dual band all ask for "15W usb-c" and the tri band all ask for 27W usb-c, which is probably 5V3A and 9V3A respectively. I'd expect that you could _probably_ get by with a much much cheaper non-PD splitter that simply provides the expected voltage.
This feels like a pretty good compromise. USB-C PD is, per watt, often half the price or less, and it's convenience imo cannot be beat since it's such a common power delivery system. Small GaN based adapters with multiple ports are abundant and cheap (<$0.50/watt) versus more specialized, less common gear that's more expensive (often >$1.00/watt).
It does feel great having one and only one cable! Right now PoE is the winner here, especially because it has range. I'd love to see USB try & compete a little more. I'd create a USB long range standard- target 5Gbps (or 2.5Gbps?) but for many meter long runs, with power-delivery. Now that we have (on paper) extended-power USB-C with 48V power, restricting ourselves down to 1A would still be quite useful (48W)!
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Compliant-Microsoft-Surface-M...
However, since its so new, you're unlikely to have a 6GHz capable client... There are 6Ghz capable PCIe cards (desktop and M.2 form factors), but I haven't seen any 6Ghz wifi USB adapters.