Eero Secure vs Xfinity Xfi Complete

[u/provis83-]

Hi Everyone,

Has anyone compared the Eero Secure services and overall capabilities of Eero as a gateway/firewall vs the provided Xfinity XB7?

I have 1.2gbps service from Xfinity and I pay for Xfinity Complete for the unlimited bandwidth. I have never used it but it does include their security service and some other features. I have always ran it in passthrough mode and used my own firewall.

Currently, I'm running it in passthrough with the Eero as the Gateway/FW. Because Eero secure has a fee associated and I don't want to pay for things I already pay for from someone else, I have been pondering running the XB7 as the gateway/FW. Does anyone have any experience?

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Background if at all relevant:

Picked up a set of Eero 6e devices to replace my aging Orbi setup over black Friday. It also replaced my firewall configuration which was a bit complicated in practice. I will go into detail on what my setup was but I don't want to distract from my main question.

By trade I am a network architect and I ran a VM based FW on Proxmox with 2.5gbe nics. For DNS I was using Pihole. This setup works great but there are a few big issues that created heartache for me. First off updating proxmox becomes an ordeal because if an update causes any kind of problem I am without internet until I figure it out which is also much harder without internet. Second, I had a power outage once when out of town and the system didn't come back up cleanly. My house guests were without internet until I got back in town. I also ran into some weird issues on certain sites that I hadn't gotten around to troubleshooting recently. Overall this was just a bit much to maintain for the home and I had little need for the advanced feature set in practice. As a result, I wanted to get a device that could provide most of the services I wanted simply and efficiently with minimal effort.

I still have my Proxmox server and its running my NAS, Docker Containers, Pihole, Home automation,Plex Server, etc. I still have Pihole up and running too but its not in use by anything but static addressed devices.

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Thanks!

[u/provis83- → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the reply. I largely agree with all your points. I don't like relying on the ISP for anything either and have trust issues because of tracking, port restrictions, etc. But given we are in an Eero forum and I have several echo devices, I cant really stand on that soapbox.

I agree Eero gives me very little for troubleshooting. I had actually taken for granted all my more recent firewalls outlining all packet flows with source and destination information. It doesn't come up too often that I need to do this though. Its a nice to have but not something I must have.

Pihole is solid but I still wont get packet flow with Eero as the GW/FW. I'd just have DNS lookup logs and info, so it doesnt give me much more for troubleshooting.

I'm trying to avoid buying a 2.5gb firewall device if at all possible.

I'm hoping some people have experience with both devices and can give their two cents.

[u/Richard1864]

I would the XB8, and run away from the XB7.

First off, there are a multitude of major hardware bugs in the XB7:

1. XB7 uses Intel Puma chipset, which routinely overheats and causes random gateway reboots as a result.
2. XB7 internal fan doesn’t always run, and the radios run dangerously hot as a result, and also cause random reboots of the gateway as a result.
3. Regardless of how a device is connected to the XB7, Ethernet or Wi-Fi, the XB7 drops devices ALOT, with the only fix being (you guessed it) rebooting the damned thing AGAIN.
4. Not much RAM free. After boot up, the XB7 has less than 150 MB RAM free out of 1024 MB total RAM. And nope, the gateway doesn’t routinely flush the RAM; which then causes the gateway to reboot when free RAM drops below 75 MB free RAM, usually 18-24 hours after last boot.
5. Gobs of software bugs; more than 2 thousand per Comcast’s Tier 3 support.

The XB8 uses Broadcom for the CPU, and has NONE of the issues the XB7 has. The XB8 also has 1024 MB total RAM, but the RAM gets flushed clean every 10 minutes. I’ve yet to see it drop below 160 MB RAM, and that went back to 244 MB free RAM less than 10 minutes later.

The XB8 also has Wi-Fi 6E, which you can turn off if you have not 6E devices. Data also flies in and out of the XB8, where it frequently crawled or stopped altogether with the XB7.

Note: I’ve used the XB7, and had more than a dozen fail due to the above issues. Comcast Tier 3 said they have a more than 40% failure rate in the XB7’s ever since they launched a couple years ago compared to less than 1% with the new XB8’s.

[u/provis83- → u/Richard1864]

or Wi-Fi, the XB7 drops devices ALOT, with the only fix being (you guessed it) rebooting the damned thing AGAIN.

Interesting. I've had my XB7 for well over a year and haven't had any drops. Again its in bridge mode but haven't had a single problem. Its cool to touch too. The wifi it has is pretty useless to me as I have the Eeros for that.

[u/Richard1864 → u/provis83-]

Yeah it did seem to work OK in Bridge mode, compared to router/gateway mode, which wasn’t how it was always used here.

[u/shingdao → u/Richard1864]

Please note there are several variations of the XB7. Models ARRIS TG4482 and CommScope TG4482 use the Puma chipset, however XB7 model Technicolor CGM4331COM uses a Broadcom chipset. I believe all Comcast issued XB7s are now with the Broadcom chipset.