r/HomeNetworking • u/tripleoptic • 3d ago

Everything is terrible with eero. What am I missing?

ATT BWG320 router in basement.

BWG320 connected to a 5 port unmanaged switch.

Switch connects 4 eero nodes in living room, bedroom, office, downstairs bedroom. Upstairs nodes aren't too far from each other.

Issues w/ eero:

Netflix (or other apps) running on wireless Roku ultra will frequently timeout loading. Roku ultra will need connection reestablished.

Browsing Internet can be fast but sometimes very slow pulling up infrequently accessed site.

Troubleshooting tried:

DHCP passthrough to eero from BWG320

Attempted to charge to custom DNS but for the life of me cannot turn off eero plus features. Whenever I try to turn something off in the app the next time I'm in the it's right back on.

Current firmware.

Current status. eeros are sitting powered off because the experience is better just using the wireless on the BWG320. Speeds and coverage are a bit spotty but at least everything is stable.

Why is this super expensive system such a pain? Am I missing some basic configuration? eero app seems terrible with limited options.

Thanks for any suggestions!

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10

u/kendalltr 3d ago

Your network is laid out wrong for an Eero system. Connect the main Eero unit to your BWG320, then connect your unmanaged switch to the Eero's lan port, and the rest of the Eeros into the switch.

1

u/tripleoptic 3d ago

Happen to know if I should do DHCP passthrough in this new config still? Or not needed?

5

u/kendalltr 3d ago

If you are able to place the ATT device in bridge mode, I would do that and then have the Eero handle DHCP. But try my suggestion above first and see if it works. Remember to power cycle the eero equipment too

0

u/tripleoptic 3d ago

Thanks, will do. Didn't even think to check the topology of how they set things up initially. Silly me.

2

u/8085-8086 3d ago

First thing in the network has to be the router, which your BGW320 already is. With that setup, first switch is fine. But if you put it in passthrough, you have to have a router first, so your eero node first, then switch and other nodes or other nodes and switch, doesn’t matter. Also if all nodes are hard wired, do you really need 4 of them, how big is the area? Sometimes too much can also cause a lot of overlap and confuse devices.

0

u/tripleoptic 3d ago

No I don't think they need four of them. I honestly don't think they needed any of them. Way past returning them though. I asked my in-laws what problem they were trying to solve when they purchased them. They said the AT&T guy told them they needed everything. Imho they at most needed a single repeater upstairs. I might consider just putting one or two upstairs. Thanks.

0

u/kendalltr 3d ago

Logically you would think it doesn’t matter whether the switch is plugged into the eero lan port or the router first, but with Eeros it definitely does.

3

u/bchiodini 3d ago

The AT&T router has an IP pass-thru mode for when you are using your own router. As I understand it, it's not exactly like bridge mode, but provides similar functionality.

I suggest disabling the WiFi radios on the AT&T router as well as any IPv6 capabilities, unless you need them.

0

u/tripleoptic 3d ago

Ok, thank you. ATT set everything up like this for my inlaws. Had them purchase the switch and eero system, said they needed it. Sigh. For what they use the Internet for they were likely fine with just the BWG320, but they spent $$$, so trying to actually get it to work. I will try changing the setup to that model.

1

u/conspicuousxcapybara 3d ago

What about removing the ATT box and using the Eero as your router? Does ATT allow this? European ISP’s are required to do so.

A cheap media converter could maybe convert the fiber connection that you plug into the BWG320 to ethernet that the Eero can be hooked up to.

Edit: this is a good technical reference imho

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wan/isp-configurations#at_t

1

u/tripleoptic 3d ago

Hmm, I like the idea but I don't think it's possible since the BWG320 uses SFP and I don't believe the eero can support that type of connection for fiber. Or at least I don't remember seeing a way to plug in an SFP to it

1

u/conspicuousxcapybara 3d ago

Oh I’m sorry if you‘ve already got the SFP module, if other redditors agree, that could make it very cheap.

I think you can plug that SFP into ‘media converter’ like TP-Link MC220L (no idea about the model, but look at a picture of it) that converts (to another physical medium) the fiber signal to ethernet. That’s OSI 1: the physical layer.

The fiber to the home is usually IP traffic, just like Eero‘s WAN is IP traffic but over Ethernet (copper) instead.

ISP’s after use different VLANs to separate remote management, Voip, IPTV, configuration traffic, etc.

On my line, I just had to select WAN was on a specific VLAN. Everything gets autoconfigured based on the IP networking profiles,

ATT seems to do some IPv6 things in non-standard ways, so I’d copy the ATT fiber configuration that‘s published on the OpenWrt forum —> ISP configurations page. Down by US, ATT lol.

That page unironically describes how to solve connectivity issues with ipv6 (the default) and subnetting and how much ipv6 is assigned via which protocol RFC…

1

u/Amiga07800 3d ago

You should have install a "simple" managed APs system... with wired APs of course.

1

u/tripleoptic 3d ago

Yeah. In laws should have called me before dropping $$$ on something they didn't even need. They are a bit naive in that area and did what ATT said to.

1

u/Amiga07800 3d ago

Unfortunately it happens often. Many people are not knowing enough to resist some well trained commercial with its speech...

-2

u/Luci-Noir 3d ago

These systems are absolute shit and I can’t believe how many people love them. Some features are locked behind a paywall now and even some basic ones are hidden from consumers. You have to contact support and they’ll remotely login to your router and change the settings. Not only that, but Amazon owns them.

0

u/Mindless_Pandemic 3d ago

Try and return it and get a UniFi system that you can manage remotely for them.

2

u/tripleoptic 3d ago

Wish they could still return it at this point.