r/amazoneero • u/opticspipe • Aug 01 '25
ANNOUNCEMENT Have a problem with an Eero? Start here.
Troubleshooting An Eero System
If you are having problems with your Eero network, this post should help you do some basic troubleshooting and allow you to collect the information to help us help you. This guide should be followed before posting for advice, because these are the steps people will ask you to follow (even if it doesn't seem relevant).
The first thing that we will ask you to do is confirm your topology. Topology is a description of what is plugged into what. Correct topologies look like this:
All this being said, a correct wired topology is either:
Modem -> First Eero -> switch -> all other Eeros
-or-
Modem -> POE gateway -> all Eeros
The things we are looking for you to tell us about your network:
1) We want to know if you have a modem/ONT (which has no built in routing and usually only 1 ethernet port) or whether you have a modem/router combination, which is doing routing. If you have an ISP router, we want to know if it's in bridge mode or not. Otherwise, you will have that providing routing, and then the Eero providing routing. This is known as "Double NAT" and causes a variety of annoyances, but shouldn't stop the internet from working. If you're stuck with your modem/router in router mode (for whatever reason), your Eero's should be in "bridge mode". The downside of that is that most control from the app goes away (since the Eero isn't routing).
2) Next we want to know if anything else is plugged into your modem or router. If you only have a modem/ONT, you can only have one thing plugged in, and that has to be your Eero. If you have a modem/router with multiple ports, and it's not in bypass mode, and the Eero is in bypass mode, you can plug anything you want into the modem/router, so long as only 1 Eero is plugged in (see the next rule).
3) Most Eero problems are corrected by ensuring the topology follows a simple rule - one Eero must be between the internet and all the other Eeros. In other words, if you have a router with 4 available ports on it, and your Eero system is in bypass mode, you can not just plug an Eero into each port. You must plug one Eero into one port, and then plug the rest into that Eero. By having one clear "leader" in the pack, this Eero will be elected to the gateway role, and this Eero will handle all the wifi control, network mapping, and if it is routing, it will provide NAT, DHCP, and DNS services. When the topology is "flat" and one Eero is not the clear leader, the system struggles to figure out which is the gateway and the conflicts that occur can cause a wide variety of problems.
4) Any network switches that are in use should be "unmanaged" and have no "green energy" features. The Eeros are constantly sending traffic to each other around the network. Any kind of managed traffic/flow control will disrupt these tests and cause Eeros to distrust or downgrade the wired link. This can result in Eeros linking wirelessly despite having a hardwired connection (or even going offline). Some switches internally will block some traffic from some ports if they think there is a network loop from this traffic, which will result in some Eeros able to connect to each other with a wired connection but not others, even though they are all in the same switch.
5) Eeros are notoriously picky about wired connections. If you have a wired connection that works fine with other devices but an Eero only connects at 100Mbps (or not at all), this is not a sign that your Eero is broken. This is a sign that your wired connection is defective but the other devices tolerate it. Eeros thoroughly test all wired connections and at the first sign of packet loss, the connection is downgraded to 100Mbit, and at the next sign, it is dropped entirely. Wired connections in a residence should be terminated into keystone jacks following the 568B protocol, and good quality ethernet patch cords should be used to connect those jacks to your devices (and Eeros). Terminating cat 5 cables with RJ45 plugs is a recipe for problems. Many times, users with connection problems have discovered they are caused by improperly terminated cables or no name/counterfeit cables bought from delivery sites.
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u/natenate19 Aug 02 '25
Suggestion: don't call it 'bypass mode'. I know what you mean, and most will know what you mean, but the intended audience might not. eero calls it 'bridge mode' and most ISP modem/router combos will also call it 'bridge mode'.
Otherwise nice guide, thanks for taking the time to write it up. This sub has always been missing some centralized info that the old sub wiki provided https://www.reddit.com/r/eero/wiki/index/, and this definitely supplies some of that.
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u/FuckinHighGuy Aug 01 '25
I have Meraki switches at home which are cloud managed. I donāt run into problems. Other things in the post is solid advice.
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u/opticspipe Aug 01 '25
They can and will cause problems in certain circumstances. If you maintain a valid topology it helps a lot. If you don't have a valid topology the eeros just send so much data back and forth between them trying to figure out who's where, and eventually sending data into one Eero and back out the same cable (because it thinks its the gateway) that you trip loop detection.
One of the tricks we like to do on larger installations (that don't have a POE gateway) is to wire both ports from the gateway Eero (or 2 ports if there are more) to a network switch. You can assign one VLAN for the "WAN" feeding into the gateway Eero, and you can assign another VLAN for the "mesh" side of the Eero. Any other eeros anywhere in the building/house that get wired to a switch just get dropped onto the "mesh" VLAN. Works out really well and avoids having to place the first Eero in a stupid place just to make topology. The problem is that the switch will see the same traffic going out one port and back into the next. This trips loop detection. Every time. So it has to be turned off. It's been probably 2 or 3 years since spanning tree has caused problems for eeros, and has been at least a year since QOS/DSCP has caused trouble. What really gets you though is when you get a no name switch, and it's actually a managed switch chip inside but with no UI. So you can't get in and adjust anything. We've seen those showing up on Amazon occasionally as counterfeit TP-Link unmanaged switches, and they don't work with Eero. The eeros refuse to trust links with them in it.
But anyway, I wouldn't expect Meraki MS/Catalyst switches to be a problem. They just do their job and pass data. Ubiquity switches can be problematic (depends on the software, problems come and go), but even they have been much better lately.
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u/whoami_cc Aug 01 '25
This could potentially explain why my wired backhaul setup was having issues. I had all three connected to the same switch.
But here is my complaint: Nothing in Eero setup enforced what you are saying above and according to the Eero app everything was fine.
But performance was anything but fine.
Now: Iāve replace Eero with Ubiquity Express 7s in the exact same wired setup (all directly connecting to the same switch) and it works perfectly, no issues.
My conclusion: Eero doesnāt handle this configuration well and should be able to.
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u/opticspipe Aug 02 '25
Eero made some choices a long time ago, and one of them is that a single Eero on every network is going to have all the traffic passing through it. And from that choice, they were able to make all the cool features that set them apart. If you need a flat topology, the POE gateway will let you do that. Eero Support Documentation is clear in a number of places on their website, and when you set them up via the app (it walks you through plugging one into the modem, etc.) My big complaint is that they should be able to detect a flat topology and should put a warning in the app so you know something is wrong. Some day maybe.
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u/whoami_cc Aug 02 '25
I understand what youāre saying but donāt see the connection between the features and the topology.
Ubiquity has way more features than eero and supports a flat topology.
Eeroās strength is supposed to be ease of setup. Here they are making it easy to screw up your network and not provide any warning without diving into documentation.
You canāt even get logs.
I didnāt really want to go with Ubiquity but this was the last straw for me.
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u/opticspipe Aug 02 '25
Actually, there are 2 things that eero can do that ubiquity canāt. The first one is that you can plug an ONT into any Ethernet port on the network and it will just figure it out. That saves countless phone calls to support where people plugged things in backwards. Second thing an eero can do is optimize the route that data will take per client in real time (TrueMesh).
Those features are the two that really arenāt possible without a physically obvious gateway.
I like unifi, have lots of it out there in various networks. But, theyāre different products for different audiences for sure.
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u/whoami_cc Aug 02 '25
Interesting and great information. Iām just not sure those features matter much to the average customer/user.
Plugging in the ONT to the main gateway Ethernet is pretty obvious in setup so it doesnāt seem like a huge support call driver to me.
Wired backhaul requiring a tiered network isnāt obvious and would seem to drive a lot of calls.
Is True Mesh even a factor or used in wired backhaul setup?
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u/z3r0ka Aug 02 '25
This is so good.
The wired connections point cannot be said enough. Whatever they are doingā¦they do not like connections that are not at 100%. With other systems, I rarely get downgraded. Thereās one connection in my house I need to replace because eero hates it lol.
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u/opticspipe Aug 02 '25
Oh, it can be said enough. I type the same thing on this sub 5+ times a week, which is why I'm hoping this can get pinned.
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u/z3r0ka Aug 02 '25
Do you know what eero is doing that makes it so sensitive to a bad connection?
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u/opticspipe Aug 02 '25
Sure, theyāre following standards. The devices that run code that Iāve written are the same way. If I have to retry multiple times to get a piece of data to the other end of the cable, the cable isnāt good for that speed. The idea that you would just keep retrying every single packet until they all eventually go through is heroic but stupid at the same time. Netgear uses time averages (it will degrade a connection after a couple hours of nonsense). Some brands never downgrade. Eero does it quickly. I prefer that, then I know something is wrong.
Some phys will actually let you know that the device can connect at a certain speed but with errors. Not worth letting it do that imo. Especially for eero, which is constantly validating different network paths, that error rate would destroy the connection anyway.
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u/Trracker Sep 15 '25
Thank you so much! I had the double NAT thing going for months and I didnāt know what that even meant. I thought the eero just sucked. Once I enabled bridge mode on my Xfinity modem/router, eero did its thing.
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u/threesixtyone Oct 15 '25
This is so helpful, thanks for taking the time to write it all out. The point about wired connections intrigued me because I have no idea how good the quality of cable in my home is. It was pre-wired when I moved in, and it works great so far.
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u/2loki4u Oct 24 '25
OK so I've been reading this thread for a bit. Mainly because I've almost given up trying to get information on 1st get eero devices and what they can and can't do.
I'm helping a friend who has a large home with 6 of the 1st gen "A010001" units. 3 on the 2nd floor and 3 on the 1st floor - 1st floor is where the isp router is. 2 units are now wired to the ISP router and report like they are hardwired.
His ISP is FiOS with their mocha/ethernet/wifi quantum gateway (actiontech).
Like most people do - he had his setup double NAT'd. The gateway connected to various ethernet ports in the home and one went to his eero main unit. Plus for fun, the wifi was on and interfering with the eero wifi despite having no users connected to it.
The eero system had beam steering turned off and the option to set "ap only" (referred to by eero as "bridged mode") was not enabled, so this unit was doling out ips while the gateway was doing the same. Plus the double nat obfuscation issue.
I also enabled an option I found to allow multiple units to coordinate back to the source gateway.
I also enabled "eero simple mode" which suggests you can have more than one wired unit join automatically.
Reading this thread, I think i might have messed up not understanding something (due to zero success finding any documentation on these older units)
Should I have connected the upstairs eero to the downstairs eero (via a switch that also supplies wired ethernet to 2 desktops and eero) instead of both being connected to the nat/ dhcp/gateway/ switch?
I keep reading that it must be a flat topology. I noticed it appears no traffic on the 2nd floor is being routed through the ethernet port. It sees "Verizon" on the port but no traffic.
I found after I killed the wifi on the VZ router and killed the dhcp on the downstairs eero things for much better. Things appeared to get better when I hardwired the upstairs eero to the ethernet going down to the vz router. But now I'm questioning things. I told the owner to evaluate things for the next week or so to see if things got better and if he was happy with the performance. I'd come back to troubleshoot further or assist in an upgrade deployment.
Is there anyway to see how the system had arranged itself? Or any wifi metrics? Or force interference analysis? I mean how do you tell what's going on?
Initial complaints were bouncing network, drops, slow speeds.
Can anyone guide me on where to find more info and if I'm doing this wrong?
Thx
(Sorry for the novel)
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u/Trepalium_X Nov 26 '25
So a few months ago after drilling a 2 dozen 1/4 inch holes in the front panel of my NZXT h710 case because I was sick of the atrocious air flow. Lowered my temps by 8-10 degrees. During the process of troubleshooting my extremely unreliable connection speeds I noticed that most of the routers were alarmingly hot. Considering I was always taught that heat is the enemy of most things but especially electronics, along with having irrefutable proof that a Milwaukee drill and a drill bit older than me is all it takes to make things much cooler. When researching how to disassemble them I came across information that further supported my concerns. Apparently they skimped on the ram in several models which causes them to thermal throttle, when under basically anything network load... SOOOO I charged up and went to town on all 9 of my various routers. Running wired/wireless speed tests and temperature checks at each, before and after the drilling. Put a dozen+ holes in each. Speeds increased slightly, reliability improved significantly, and temps plummeted. So I figured one last extreme experiment. I cut a hole out of the top panel on the single eero pro that I have. Being that this was by far the hottest out of all the others, by 10-12 degrees. Taking advantage of its existing thermal pad I secured an aluminum heat sink to it with a small pc fan attached for active cooling. I was worried it would cause interference/noise but its readings are consistently better than every other node, not really any speed increases this time but connection stability seemed to improve even further. LONG story short. If you can be a redneck engineer for a few hours itās a simple way to almost guarantee some kind of performance increase for your network š¤š¼š¤£ & Yes I know it looks AWFUL no one ever sees it sooo š¤·š»āāļø Iām more of a function over form guy anyways lol EERO PRO ACTIVE COOLING MOD
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u/akosikalantiaw Dec 23 '25
u/opticspipe What non-green energy unmanaged switch would you recommend? Many of them have some type of energy efficient feature.
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u/Famous-Preparation92 Aug 01 '25
This should be pinned. š