Amazon eero 6+ mesh wifi system – Supports internet plans up to a Gigabit, Coverage up to 4,500 sq. ft., Connect 75+ devices, 3-pack by eero

I have a lot of grandkids that come over and spend the night. They complained about “my Internet” for years. Works great for the wife and me, but the grandkids were not happy. So I decided to try a mesh system.

I read a lot about the various mesh systems out there and decided to give the eero system a try. I decided on the 6+ system because it was the latest release and the price was right for three units. The Pro line was just too expensive; for $400 more I did not see a real advantage.

Two days after ordering the eero routers arrived. I quickly unboxed and disconnected the Netgear router and remote Access point that I placed on the upper floor.

Our house is about 2,800 square foot ranch. The Internet comes into the basement. I placed the first eero router where the old Netgear router was sitting, connected it to the cable modem, then added power to the eero and used the eero app on my iPhone to begin setting it up. Set-up went pretty quick on the first unit. I then connected the open port on the main eero router to a Netgear switch. The Netgear switch is then connected to a MoCA adapter to give me wired Ethernet connections in three other locations in the house. Those three locations also have Netgear switches connected through MoCA adapters. All but one MoCA are 2.5v and one is a 1.1v MoCA.

Next I put the second unit upstairs on top of a dry sink cabinet and set that one up with the app which went quickly. Finally, the third app was placed in one of the two bedrooms the grandkids like to use when visiting.

Now I started to do speed tests in different rooms and locations throughout the house. I will honestly tell you that at first, I was not impressed. I expected better speeds/bandwidth then what I was seeing. Since only the main router had a wired connection, the other two units relied on a wireless connection back to the main router. In some cases I was only seeing about 50Mbs in most of the upstairs areas. Ugh!

Then I decided to check the speed/bandwidt on my main computer which had a wired connection using a MoCA adapter back to a small Netgear switch next to the main eero router. I was only getting ~150Mbs! That was a “WTF” moment as it should have been around 400Mbs which is the bandwidth I have from the Internet provider.

More frustration, but I put that issue on hold for a bit. I started moving the two upstairs eero devices around to different rooms and locations. Sometimes they improved, sometimes not. Frustration.

Then I decided to move one of the eero devices to the media cabinet where I had a small Netgear switch connected to a MoCA adapter which of course went back to a MoCA adapter connected to the main eero router. I did not do this originally because I tried to locate the two upstairs eero devices as centrally in the house as possibly.

That really changed things. Suddenly I was getting better speed and bandwidth from not only the wired upstairs eero device ~400Mbs, but also to the second wireless eero device. So now I had a better wireless signal with the wireless eero device.

Then back to the main computer. Still only ~150Mbs. For grins I had a moment where a light went off….let me try shutting the power off to the 1.1v MoCA adapter. Checked the speed on the main computer again, and over 400Mbs. Now I knew that MoCA was backwards compatible, but after this I did some reading. What I missed is that when you mixed versions, the entire MoCA Ethernet will go to the bandwidth of the older MoCA in use. Makes sense now, but what did not make sense was that they same set-up was being used pre-eero install and was not an issue. Then when I reconnected power to the 1.1v MoCA, the speed not the main computer was still at ~400Mbs. I cannot explain that, but I did order a cheap Trendnet 2.5v MoCA from Amazon and replaced the old version so that now all MoCA adapters were at version 2.5.

Since everything seemed to be running well now, I just experimented with placement of the remaining eero unit that was being used wirelessly seeing where I got the best speed when devices were connected to it. Finally settled on the guest bedroom.

The last thing I did was change the IP addresses and range to match what I had on the old Netgear routers and even assigned four of the hardware devices fixed IP addresses as before.

The grandkids have stopped complaining about the WiFi. I am also very happy.

I should also add that when the grandkids are not here, we have close to 70 devices connected to the network such as Echo devices in each room, iPhones, iPads, Fire Tablets, TVs, Fire TV units. several computers including Raspberry Pi units (my ham radio hobby related Pi’s), home automation with a Habitat and God only knows what else.

My advice if you buy the eero system. Do not get discouraged if you run into issues. Keep trying. Mine was a bit more complicated because of the MoCA Ethernet network and all the devices I have connected. Yours may go in much easier. Try to use a wired connection to at least one eero on each floor of your home. Also keep moving the eero devices around for best placement and speed/bandwidth.

If you have issues and questions, eero has great community forums. I never asked any questions, but did use the forums to locate issues/suggestions that others had which helped me quite a bit. In summary, I am very happy with the eero 6+ system.

I hate upgrading my internet/network devices. There’s always the worry about messing something up & since your network is down, it’s hard to find answers, unless you google from your phone. I’ve been running an Apple Airport wifi system for a long time & it worked great. Since it worked well & was easy to set up, I was in no hurry to upgrade.

A few weeks ago, the airport died on a Wednesday night. I work from home & had a big project due Friday, so I tried in vain for several hours to fix it, to no avail. I did a search for mesh routers, and found the this one got good reviews & was available for overnight delivery. I bought it at 10:30 PM, watched the setup video, installed the app on my phone & went to bed. When I woke up at 6, the package was here & it was up & running by 6:15 AM.

I have no idea if this is a great router or not, but I do know that it’s super simple to set up, literally just plug it in, open the app & follow the instructions. I know that it works as well as my Airport did & I get the max speeds both up & down from my modem.

I had 3 airports to get coverage throughout my house, but bought a 2 pack of euros, as the 3 pack wasn’t available for overnight delivery. I’ve noticed that the 2 pack gives as good of coverage as 3 Airports, so I’m not in a hurry to add a 3rd node.

All in all, if you value simplicity, this is the router for you. Could not have been simpler to set up.

Edited to add: I’ve been having occasional issues with Microsoft Teams giving me a popup saying it was having low bandwidth issues (or something like that). This is since I started my current job, and extends back to when I had the Apple Airports for wireless. I didn’t think it was a ‘me’ thing, since others on my team have the exact same issue. I was doing some reading on it & one possible cause is when you are downloading a large file, that process can take up all of your bandwidth momentarily & that will cause issues. One solution is to enable SQM on your routers (if that setting is available).

Lo & behold, that option is included on the eeros. I hadn’t set this up initially because I didn’t know what it was & the notice on the setting says that it may slow down certain processes, which sounded like a bad thing. In reality, it works great. It has completely solved my bandwidth issues in teams, and I can’t even tell that anything is slowed down.

I’m not a really technical person, so I may be missing some piece of this, but essentially it monitors your bandwidth & if it senses that one process (could be gaming, downloading a movie to your Apple TV, downloading a large work file, whatever) is taking up too much of the bandwidth, it limits that specific process to ensure that there is enough bandwidth for all of the other processes that are running, so it’s not just ‘first come, first served’ on your bandwidth. I HIGHLY recommend this setting for anyone who works remote.