Advice sought on updating my home wifi!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Thanks in advance for advice and help.

At present I have 3 Apple airports (one actually being a time capsule), all wired by Ethernet to my internet modem/router. They are “meshed” so all running the same wifi network name. My house is over several levels and has stone, concrete and metal walls and floors in various places, so 3 wifi sources are the minimum. I may need a fourth though!

Our bandwidth needs aren’t great, there’s just the two of us here and we don’t do a lot of streaming on multiple devices at once. All up we have 1 smart TV, 2 phones, 1 iPad, and 2 computers online all the time.

It basically works fine, but I’m looking to update to wifi 6, 6e or 7 (or wait for 8?). The time capsule has died twice (hard disk) so it’s probably time to upgrade, and to separate the wifi and backup functions.

The new wrinkle is we’ve installed a heat pump upstairs outdoors, which uses 2.4ghz to connect to our wifi, BUT the reception there is marginal - its control box is attached to a metal fence on the side away from the nearest wifi source. Today it dropped off wifi entirely, putting my iPhone next to it saw no wifi at all. An hour later there was one bar and it was back online. I guess that is likely interference from neighbours?

I’m looking at Eero equipment, as I already have their app and am support for another wifi network that uses Eero already.

What I think I’ll have to do is run another Ethernet cable to as close to the heat pump as I can (while still indoors) and put a 4th wifi node there. And of course replace the other 3 with compatible Eero nodes.

I’ve gone back and forth on which wifi standard to move to; 6 is much cheaper and is probably enough for our needs, but OTOH I always like to be in the latest! And range and penetration are issues here.

As I understand it, they all can use 2.4ghz to talk to the heat pump, and that frequency has the best range/penetrating power, is that right? How does channel width figure into this, and how is that set?

And finally I see Eero offer kits for (say) wifi 7 or wifi 7 Pro - what is the actual difference there? Is it worth the extra?

Thanks all!

2

2.4 GHz has the best range and penetrating power, but it also is more likely to suffer from interference issues. Microwave ovens also work on approx. 2.4 GHz as do many other devices. 5 GHz doesn’t penetrate walls quite as well, but is less likely to suffer from interference issues.

Most likely.

Is the heat pump 2.4 GHz only or can it be switched over to 5 GHz?

Eero wifi 7 is dual band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Eero wifi 7 Pro is tri-band, 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz.

While the Pro is a higher performance device and is generally “better”, I don’t see anything in your post that makes me think you’ll get any noticeable benefit from the Pro. Your usage doesn’t need the higher horsepower.

3

Only 2.4ghz. So it seems I’ll need that fourth node, and have to get ethernet up near the heat pump somehow!

Given how cheap they are during the current sales I’m thinking of getting the 7 Pro anyway; apart from anything else using the 6ghz band will presumably have little to no interference from neighbours.

Thanks a lot for the advice!

4

Yes, because penetration with 6Ghz is even worse than with 5Ghz.

Before spending too much more on 6Ghz, make sure you have devices that can support it. Otherwise you’re just setting off a chain reaction of upgrades (phones, laptops, tablets), which will make it much more expensive than the non-6 Ghz option.

Channel width is important for total speed, but it also can increase interference, because it spans multiple smaller channels. For example, 5Ghz 80Mhz channel 155 uses all of the airwaves of regular (20Mhz) channels 149-161. If you can use wider channels without interference, then it should perform better, but if you’re in an area with lots of interference narrower channels might actually perform better.

On 2.4Ghz I’d just use the narrowest channel. Nothing that cares about speed should be on 2.4 anyway. If you have an old streaming device that only does 2.4, and it has problems, then maybe you need to upgrade to one that can handle 5Ghz.

If running an ethernet cable near the heat pump to add another WiFi access point is difficult, then a WiFi extender is probably good enough. You can get cheap ones that plug into an outlet and will create another WiFi network that your heat pump can connect to. So you’d have AskanceWifi and then AskanceWifi-ext. The extenders add latency and slow things down, but that shouldn’t matter for the heat pump.

5

We have iPhone 16, 17, 4gen iPad, 2024 iMac - pretty sure they can all handle 6ghz

I’ve not had to deal with channel width before - this is a config option in the Eero app I’d assume?

Thanks!

6

I wanted to share some recent anecdotal experience with a home wifi mesh… apparently, it’s possible to have too many mesh nodes in too small a space.

I was having some connectivity issues recently, especially with things that were further away from the “main” mesh node (the one that was connected to the cable modem and acting as a router). Previously, we had two nodes, one at the modem and one at the center of the house. I added an additional two more nodes. This did improve the range quite a bit — things were more stably connected after that — but it drastically reduced the bandwidth, to the point where it was impossible to stream higher-res videos smoothly anymore.

We have gigabit cable. Hardwired to the main node, I get about 800-850 Mbps. Some amount of loss is no big deal. Over WiFi, I would get about 300 - 400 Mbps with two nodes. With four nodes, that became about 25-60 Mbps, even on 5 GHz. I didn’t realize how big of an impact this could make until everything started stuttering all the time. I unplugged the two nodes and the speeds shot back up to several hundred, but the further away devices stopped being able to connect as stably. As an experiment, I tried only having one node active (basically reducing the mesh to a single router/access point), and speeds went even higher, to like 500-600 Mbps. 5 vs 6 GHz didn’t make much of a difference; the devices would connect as they wished, and I couldn’t force them to choose one or the other.

The tests were done with recent-ish devices, like M4/M2 Macs, Pixel 10 phones, etc. The routers are Nest Wifi Pro, Google’s 6e mesh router. I also tried the Wyze ones and those were even worse. I don’t know if Eero would be better. I think some of them have dedicated wireless backhauls… mine is supposed to, but it’s still much worse than hardwiring.

If you can hardwire any of the nodes, it would be better. Absent that, if simply adding nodes doesn’t help, you might try making a 2.4 GHz-only access point just for the heat pump, while using 5 GHz or 6 GHz for everything else. Sadly there is a tradeoff between range and bandwidth, and devices will unpredictably frequency-jump if they all share the same SSIDs. For anything closer to the router(s), it’s better to force them stay on 5 or 6 (by having separate SSIDs by frequency) and not risk them accidentally hopping to 2.4.

Some version of WiFi (maybe 7?) is supposed to be able to merge multiple frequencies together and use them all together, but I haven’t really kept up… I’d be surprised if it ended up actually working better…

7

Thanks, although I already have a mesh so I don’t think this will be an issue! My current 3 nodes are separated by floors and/or stone walls which is why I have 3 at all. Given that the newer standards have lower penetration, I’m not expecting any frequency clashes like you are probably getting.

8

Excuse me while I be pedantic about terminology, because it’s real important here.

A “mesh” WiFi network is one where the various wireless access points are not connected to each other by wires. They use WiFi to connect to the next access point, which uses WiFi to connect to the next access point, until eventually an access point with a wired connection is reached. So a network packet can leave your laptop, go to a near AP, then a far AP, then a wired AP, and finally to your router and out to the internet. Return packets will take the reverse path.

Multiple access points all connected by ethernet to the same network are just a regular old network with multiple access points. A packet leaves your laptop, goes to the AP, then goes over ethernet to the router and out to the internet. Setting the multiple APs to have the same SSID is about all that’s necessary for devices to move to the best AP. You can just walk around your house, and not worry about it. This is going to perform much better than a mesh network.

Many of the mesh kits can be setup to use ethernet, so if you have the wiring that is the way to go.

9

Good explanation!

10

Thanks; I thought “mesh” just meant multiple nodes servicing the same SSID and able to hand you over to each other, as distinct from wifi extenders/amplifiers say.

Mesh sounds like it’s not that useful and wired is vastly preferable! Hopefully my intended Eero Pro 7 nodes will work in that non-mesh mode as you describe, okay.

11

Last request, I hope!

Would it be doable to replace the current 3 nodes with Eero 7 Pros, and add in a cheaper Eero 6 for the heat pump to talk to? Is mixing standards like that okay?

12

So I went with 4 x eero Pro 7 nodes. Removed all 3 Apple Airports, added the eeros one by one, all appeared to go well - all our phones and computers connected up just fine. Same SSID etc as before.

BUT the main reason I upgraded didn’t work! The two devices in the solar system, the heat pump and battery/inverter unit, can’t find the wifi now. This despite one eero being exactly where the Airport was they used to connect to, AND the fourth eero being placed nearer the heat pump. It’s like their 2.6ghz channel isn’t as good as the old Apple devices were.

I plugged one of the Airports directly into a eero , in the place where the heat pump used to connect, and bingo it worked perfectly!

Anyone know what is going on here? Is there something I can tweak in the eero app to address this?

Thanks all!

13

Could it be a WPA3 issue? If you have that on, might be worth trying WPA2 mode instead.

https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042523671-What-is-WPA3

14

As @Reply says, it could be a WPA3 vs WPA2 issue, or some other limitation of the solar and heat pump that makes it so they can’t connect.

If the Eeros allow you to create multiple WiFi networks, then make one that is fast, and has all of the security features turned on, and then make a second (with a different name) that is compatible with the solar and heat pump. You can even limit the second to just 2.4ghz.

That is what I do to connect my car charger, which can’t handle any hint of WPA3, even running in WPA3/WPA2 compatibility mode won’t work.

15

Thanks, but the heat pump connects to the same wifi network (although with a quite weak signal that drops out sometimes) via the Apple Airport - I would think that means it can’t be a WPA issue? All nodes on the same SSID would use the same WPA, would they not?

To me the symptoms are as if the Eeros are simply not doing 2.6ghz, but I can’t see anywhere in their management app where that might be set.

16

I do not believe so? The SSID is just a name, and two completely different Wifi systems (with their own password or WPA scheme) could have the same name. The heat pump would connect to whichever one it likes.

What your Airport is doing is just creating another access point that happens to have the same SSID. It is essentially a wifi conflict in favor of your heat pump. It isn’t really joining the Eero mesh, just kinda coexisting with it.

If you want to test it, just unplug the Airport and set the Eero to WPA2 only. Maybe even WPA1 or WEP, depending on how old your heat pump is and what it supports. Hopefully just WPA2 because the older ones are unlikely to be supported by modern Eero systems…

17

You can also temporarily disable the 5GHz, leaving only the 2.4GHz*, for testing: https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005497223-Can-I-set-my-eeros-to-use-the-2-4-or-5-GHz-frequency

(*It’s 2.4, not 2.6, FYI… not trying to nitpick, just might be helpful while searching)

18

Just to be clear - all I did was plug the Airport into one of the eero nodes with an ethernet cable. I didn’t set up a different wifi network. Does that change things?

But yes, I saw something elsewhere about using only 2.4ghz , I might try that at some point.

BTW before I put the Airport back on, so eero-only, the heat pump could not detect ANY wifi at all! It’s not that it saw my SSID but failed to connect to it, a wifi search on it found nothing!

19

No, it doesn’t change things — as in, it’s still the situation I described, where you basically had two separate wi-fi networks with the same SSID. They’re not meaningfully a “mesh” in the sense that Airport was not relaying to & from the other Eero nodes.

To be explicit, when you plug a different WiFi router into another one, what usually ends up happening is that you end up creating two separate WiFi network, one for each router. If you’d kept their default names, you’d have a “EeroWifi” and a “AirportWifi”, for example, They can coexist, with the one caveat being that the EeroWifi wouldn’t normally be able to access things connected to the AirportWifi (due to the Airport’s own NAT and firewall — to it, the Eero looks like an external WAN and not part of its own LAN).

If you happen to set both the Eero mesh and the Airport to the same SSID and password, they are still two different WiFi networks. The malicious version of this is an evil twin access point. If you do it intentionally, then what happens is that your devices will unpredictably shift between them — sometimes connecting to the Eero, sometimes connecting to the Airport. The order is unpredictable and will vary between client devices, signal strength, etc.

It may be the case — and this part is purely my speculation — that the heat pump either happened to see the Airport WiFi first and was able to connect to it successfully, or the Airport WiFi is just stronger over there so it chooses it over the Eero. But if it ever tries to roam back to the Eero, it may not be able to. You can’t always control which network it “chooses”. Momentary interference, like from a microwave oven, cordless landline phone, or just a person or two passing through, could cause a blip and a reconnect.

I don’t think 2.4 GHz would be disabled by default because usually you’d have to go out of your way to disable that, and some routers don’t even allow it. But it’s worth double-checking, I suppose.

Issues of WPA2 and WPA3 are still a possibility, especially given the setup you describe. Hypothetically, this could happen:

  1. Your heat pump is not able to connect to your Eero mesh due to WPA3 issues. It’s possible this shows up as “no networks detected” in its UI; I don’t know for sure.
  2. Once you plugged in the Airport, it created a separate WPA2 network with the same SSID and password.
  3. Your heat pump coincidentally chose to connect to the Airport instead, because its proximity causes a stronger signal. It was thus able to connect.

Another possibility is that the heat pump is remembering the MAC address of your Airport, instead of the SSID, and connecting to that instead — but that would be unusual in any wifi client device, and especially a heat pump (as far as I know).

20

Thanks folks, latest update!

WPA3 is disabled and has been since installation of the eero hardware , so that not the issue.

Today the wifi has been really slow. Looking in the eero app almost all traffic is on 2.4ghz ! It’s actually said to be congested. And the 5 and 6 ghz channels are barely used.

I didn’t look at that stat until today. Could it be adding the 2 airport devices has in some way made everything use that channel? Otherwise I don’t know how to explain what I’m seeing