What's new

Considering an Eero Pro setup

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

mikejs11

Occasional Visitor
Amazon has refurbished Eero Pro's selling for $119 right now, and I have a stacking discount. So, I was considering replacing my old TP-Link C7 with two Eero Pro units (3100 sqft house).

Right now the second unit would be using the wireless backhaul, but at some point in the future I may try Moca to add wired. My real question right now is would it be better to use one of the Eero Pro units as the main router, or should I buy something like an Edgerouter to be the router and put the Eero units in AP/Bridge mode (assuming that's possible)?
 
In my eyes, no better time to try them out and see if they work for you. That's a $50 price cut per unit from the previous $169 refurb price (as recent as a few days ago), plus your stacking discount. By three of them. If they don't pan out, presuming you have Prime, it's a quick return/refund.

Regarding whether the routing capabilities are deep enough for you, I would buy and try. That way if it's a yes, it keeps the network as simple as possible. If it falls short, Eero does offer bridge mode, which as you thought can be made to make Eero run as basically a mesh of APs only with all other services disabled. You can then drop in a proper wired router, be that an EdgeRouter X, Edgerouter 4 or 12, x86 hardware running pfSense, etc.
 
Last edited:
Would the EdgeRouter X be more powerful than an Eero? I would assume either would be better than my current Archer C7 as a router.
 
All Eero models used a quad-core variant of Qualcomm's IPQ4019, running at 700Mhz. The ER-X uses a dual-core MediaTek 880Mhz MIPS chip.

Eero can NAT up to 2Gb/s aggregate (1Gb full duplex). The ER-X, due to a lane limitation on its board, and can only NAT 1Gb/s aggregate (1Gb/s simplex). So for raw, hardware-accelerated NAT with no other services, Eero has twice the capacity.

When routing in-software for multi-core aware processes, Eero is also faster; for single-threaded processes, though, the ER-X will be in most circumstances, although sometimes ARM is better than MIPS at certain types of math. Also, I believe SQM on Eero is actually multi-core capable, so it can do 400+Mb/s of SQM versus 150-200Mb/s on the ER-X (single-threaded in EdgeOS). Of course, the ER-X is infinitely many times more feature-deep and configurable, to the point where you can install and run actual Debian packages, provided they're light enough on RAM and storage.

Hope that helps. As I said, I'd go just Eero to start, and if you're then going to go out of your way to do a discrete router, I'd probably skip the ER-X and pony up for an ER-4 (or ER-12 for the built-in switch chip).
 
What's the "stacking discount" add up to, just curious? It's already a good deal and a further discount might be hard to pass up.
 
There is a targeted deal going around for Amex 20% off if you pay with points (you can use one point and still get the discount). You can use it multiple times, but there is a max discount ($50 I believe). It looks like I only have $27 remaining, so it would be that much off. I was hoping I had more available, but I guess I used the rest on other things.. I also have an Amex offer for an additional 5 points per dollar spent at Amazon.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Gar
Amazon has refurbished Eero Pro's selling for $119 right now, and I have a stacking discount. So, I was considering replacing my old TP-Link C7 with two Eero Pro units (3100 sqft house).

Right now the second unit would be using the wireless backhaul, but at some point in the future I may try Moca to add wired. My real question right now is would it be better to use one of the Eero Pro units as the main router, or should I buy something like an Edgerouter to be the router and put the Eero units in AP/Bridge mode (assuming that's possible)?

I got three Eero Pro (refurb) last week and have been very happy with them. They look brand new and they were packaged better than the new units. I would say give it a try before the price goes up.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Gar
I haven't purchased them yet, but I was considering doing so today. What kind of speeds are you seeing when connected to the Eero Pro (the main one and then the satellites)? After doing some searching I've seen people complaining about the speed (like max speed of around 200 or 250 mbps in the same room). I have 500/500, and I can get over 400 mbps down (tests have been much slower on upload) on my old Archer C7 in the same room.
 
Raw throughput is not Eero's strong-suit, nor the point of wireless mesh. Actually usable expanded coverage and consistently low-latency, bloat-free connections are the point. And in 90+% of cases for the average Joe, that's going to matter more than being able to use 99% of an pointlessly fast speed tier. Add to that jitter and buffering due to unintelligent, flapping links with products like Orbi, which suffer from almost a complete lack of RF sampling and automatic adjustment.
 
That definitely makes sense, but I was just curious if this was still an "issue" or not.

I have a 200/10 connection. My nodes are currently connected wirelessly (considering hardwiring them soon). When connected to the router, on average, I get ~230Mbps. When connected to one of the nodes, I get anywhere from 150Mbps to 220Mbps. I'm hoping that once I have them hardwired, I will get ~230Mbps from all nodes.

I tried Orbi RBK50 and Nest Wifi before I settled on Eero. Orbi was fast but I had reliability issues with it. My wifi would drop occasionally. I also did not like the app. Nest Wifi did not have a good range and using two apps to manage the router was terrible. Eero's app is very well designed and it has been very reliable (so far, in my short term of ownership).
 
I tried Orbi RBK50 and Nest Wifi before I settled on Eero. Orbi was fast but I had reliability issues with it. My wifi would drop occasionally. I also did not like the app. Nest Wifi did not have a good range and using two apps to manage the router was terrible. Eero's app is very well designed and it has been very reliable (so far, in my short term of ownership).
Thus my points above. While other systems have theoretically faster static link capability, none have the code base quality and baked-in intelligence of Eero. Wish that wasn't the case, but it is what it is.
 
I have one last question before I pull the trigger on something (hopefully).

My current house is 3100 sqft in roughly square shape (although part of that is the garage, so it is somewhat L shaped). My main router is near the front corner of the house. My current TP-Link C7 V2 has a relatively strong 2.4 GHz signal throughout every room in the house (The worst measured was -61 dBm). The 5 GHz band is -70 dBm or better for most of the house, but the signal is weak or non-existent in two of the bedrooms.

Given this, is there a single router that could potentially push the 5 GHz band to those two rooms like the Netgear R7800 or the TP-Link C2300 (cheap)? I'm just trying to make sure that mesh is the way to go here.
 
Yes, a single router might be able to do it. In the AC space, that would be the R7800, probably beyond any other, but I'd only use one if running OpenWRT on it, as the Netgear firmware is... to put it nicely, lacking (in both stability and features). For an AX option, which may even provide more usable range over distance than the R7800, I'd primarily consider an Asus RT-AX88U running Merlin, mainly due to track record of stability. Either way, you may want to order one or the other via Amazon Prime, and trial them. If they cut the mustard, great, you're done. If not, a quick Prime exchange for Eero Pro it is. Either way, you win.

TL;DR - The most potential from an all-in-one is likely the Netgear RAX120, as Qualcomm tends to out-perform Broadcom, tier for tier, but unfortunately the same underwhelming Netgear firmware is present in large part, so I can't really recommend it. And OpenWRT probably has a year+ before they stabilize ath11k driver support. (Really Netgear.... can you please get your sh*t together... maybe? finally?!)
 
Last edited:
@mikejs11 the RT-AC3100 could handle a 5000 SqFt home in 2016.

Both the RT-AC86U and the RT-AX88U far surpass it. Particularly in throughput.

RT-AC3100 Report https://www.snbforums.com/threads/s...-go-with-the-rt-ac1900p-v3.34748/#post-281391

RT-AX88U Upgrade https://www.snbforums.com/threads/b...ta-is-now-available.60037/page-31#post-531024


All three are worth testing in your home depending on their availability and price in your part of the world. :)

With a 500/500 ISP connection, the RT-AX88U makes the most sense from my perspective. :)
 
So, the reason I brought up the TP-Link C2300 is because I can get it for $70 on eBay from the official TP-Link store, and I would imagine I can get the Netgear 7800 for cheap too. For the price of one Asus RT-AX88U, I could almost buy 3 Eero Pro units. So if I were to go that route, what would I be gaining/losing by going with one of those over the other (the Asus and the Eero's)?

I understand that the Asus would have a much higher top speed, and that the Eero's would probably offer better total coverage....
 
With all due respect, I know we have budgets to stick to, and value matters, but I think chief among decisions here is making the right one in as few attempts as reasonably possible. In my opinion, if you're going to try another all-in-one at all, you might as well go with the strongest wifi option right off the bat. While a C2300 may work well enough, if it's still not quite there, you'll be left wondering yet again if a more powerful option would have sufficed. You're free to play that game as many times as you want, but in my line of thinking, you might as well accelerate the results and save on the opportunity cost, even it means paying more for the hardware the first time around. Then you can move to mesh knowing you couldn't have done any more with an all-in-one, without multiple go-arounds. Just my two cents.
 
Last edited:
Understood. How difficult is it to set up and configure Merlin? I see people talking about it all the time with the Asus routers, but I don't know anything about it. Is this some firmware I just upload to the router periodically, or are there special steps to get this going?
 
Why not have 1 cable drop installed and use a wired backhaul for a second wireless AP. You know this will work the best.

All I can say about 1 wireless covering 5000 sqft; is rice paper walls.
 
Understood. How difficult is it to set up and configure Merlin?
No more difficult than it would be manually downloading and flashing regular Asus stock firmware.
I don't know anything about it. Is this some firmware I just upload to the router periodically, or are there special steps to get this going?
Merlin (link) is a special fork of the Asus stock firmware, modified for extra stability and functionality. The beauty of it is it's essentially as "compatible" as stock firmware from the point of view of the router, and so updating works just as natively, albeit not coming directly/automatically from Asus themselves. You would manually, periodically update from the Merlin download repositories at your discretion, which is kind of nice, from a standpoint of being able to control how often and what updates get applied.
 

Similar threads

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top