Date:  Sep 11, 2017

Notes:

1. This blog entry is not to compare with Eero with other brand.  So, don’t ask me how is it compared to Luma, Google WiFi, Netgear, etc.  I don’t know and I don’t have the answer.  What I know is, Eero is the first company that come up with Mesh-WiFi equipment, and they are now into their 2nd generation which has better hardware, better software, etc.  And they seems to have very good reviews too.
2. I used to run three Apple Airport Extreme + Express to build my WiFi mesh.  But from time to time, it creates problem.  With 80% of my home devices are Apple products, it make sense to use Apple WiFi product.  Not the best in the line, but it works.  But when it break down, it is almost hard to troubleshoot.
3. That is why in Feb 2016, I switched to Eero.  And every since that day, I have never rebooted or reset my Eero.  There is no more blind spot at home.  Every corner is covered with good bandwidth, every one is happy.
4. Eero is like Apple, you can’t actually do a lot of things with it.  If you are techie experts, this is definitely not for you.  There is no way to troubleshoot it.  But magically, it fixes itself.  (as marketed in their website).  After using it for more than 1.5 years, I am very happy with it.
5. The reason why I upgraded to Eero gen 2, because of the more advanced hardware. You got to admit, better hardware will always gives better performance.  And don’t ask me how good or how better is the performance.  Sorry, I don’t know too.  haha

So, this blog entry is about how easy it is to upgrade from the old 1st gen to 2nd gen.

1. Open up a 2nd Gen Eero, and power it up.
2. Use your Eero App on your iPhone to ADD a new Eero.  Follow all the instructions.  It does not matter where you place it.
3. After added the new Eero (2nd Gen) successfully, then, you turn off both the 1st Gen and 2nd Gen Eero and your ISP router/modem.  Unplug the 1st Gen.  Plug the Ethernet cable from your router to your 2nd Gen Eero.  Power it up.  Also power up the router/modem.
4. By switching the Ethernet cable from 1st Gen (now powered down) to 2nd Gen, the Eero systems is smart enough to recognise this change and make this new 2nd Gen the Eero gateway (the Eero that has Ethernet to the router).
5. Then, you do the same thing to other 1st Gen Eero, one by one.  Just ADD in the 2nd Gen Eero, and then, powered down the 1st Gen Eero.
6. After you switch all three of them.  Your old settings all are successfully transferred to the new 2nd Gen Eero.

See, so easy.  The whole upgrade process takes about slightly less than 10min.

If the company has made the upgrade process to be some easy, straight forward, and even a non IT-experts can do it every easily, I think, this company is in the right track to product great products.

Of course, you were wondering, can you mix the 1st Gen and 2nd Gen together?  Of course they always said you can.  Well, I move all the 1st Gen to three different locations and power all up.  And it works.  See, all 6x Eero are running at the same time.

Well, I have not verify, but there must be a trade off somewhere if you do so.  As the 1st Gen are slower box.  So, if you mixed them together, not sure will they face issues of backward compatibility, and they all have to talk using slower protocols.  We don’t know but I suspect that might happen.  This is same issue as running your home WiFi at 802.11n but you still have one single 802.11a devices connected to it and makes every other 802.11n capable devices to talk at 802.11a speed.  It slow down your network in general.

Also, it might not be a good idea to have so many WiFi access points at home.  I have not tested it, but it might cause headache, and might have health issues.

So, I turned off the 1st Gen Eero, and walk around the house and did some speedtest.

Standing beside the Eero gateway beside my router.  That gives great speed on my iPhone using speedtest.

When I go to the toilet of my bedroom where there is no wifi access point near by.

I can still get this speed.  That is quite good already.

As you know, a PPTV stream takes about 2Mbps bandwidth.  A good Netflix HD streaming takes in about 6Mbps.  So, with this kind of > 50Mbps speed, you are sure every where can get good TV streaming.  hahaha

The handover is quite good too.  Fast and stable.

Here are the box.

The hardware has been upgraded to 700Mhz Quad-Core processor.  And the 2nd Gen uses Tri-band too.

And the marketing slogans here are really true.  Every since I used Eero back in Feb 2017, I never think about WiFi again.

And there is no way to troubleshoot, but the True-Mesh software learns and keep changing your network to optimize it.

It looks not so intrusive too.

Before Eero, I was using Apple Airport Extreme + Express.  And before Apple, I was using Netgear’s WiFi extenders (which is a crap!) … and both solutions did not work as well as Eero.

I used it to connect to all my TV Console boxes.  🙂

Love it!

Last note:  I am keeping my 1st Gen Eero.  🙂  As a backup.  Don’t ask me if I want to sell it.  hahahahaha