back to article Not-spot-busting for the home: Eero thinks tiny mesh router's a winner

A San Francisco startup has launched a tiny mesh router aiming to kill notspots and end buffering in the home. Eero features dual Wi-Fi radios (alongside Bluetooth and wired Ethernet) in a curved box around 4.75inches square. It combines a router, repeater and range extender – but additional Eeros auto-configure, creating a …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    open-mesh

    Been around years and small boxes are half the cost. One issue with mesh is you loose half the bandwidth for each hop.

    1. Jon 37

      Re: open-mesh

      It claims to fix that by having two radios. (That might be why it's double the cost...)

    2. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      GHz, not Ghz

      "Eero will also switch between 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz spectrum bands..."

      GHz.

      Uppercase G

      Uppercase H

      Lowercase z

      Thank you.

  2. Jim 59

    Eero

    Seems a little expensive for a range extender with the added novelty of app integration. A cheaper alternative might be to repurpose an old router to give your home a second AP. (Link points to my own article).

    Getting the mesh talked about would require several Eeros, the ones further away from the wired master presumably getting a doubly repeated/attenuated signal. The Eero site doesn't go into details of how it is all managed, just saying it is "enterprise technology". Sounds nice, needs to be a bit cheaper ?

    1. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Eero

      Just by mentioning the word 'Enterprise' allows you to jack the price up by at least 50%.

  3. Woodnag

    No thanks

    Just for using the website and pre-ordering:

    eero inc. Master Terms of Service Last Updated - 02/01/2015 "THE TERMS OF SERVICE INCLUDE A CLASS ACTION WAIVER AND A WAIVER OF JURY TRIALS, AND REQUIRE BINDING ARBITRATION ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS TO RESOLVE DISPUTES."

    eero inc. Master Terms of Service Last Updated - 02/01/2015 "We may share personal information when we do a business deal, or negotiate a business deal, involving the sale or transfer of all or a part of our business or assets. These deals can include any merger, financing, acquisition, or bankruptcy transaction or proceeding."

    Again - this is just for using the website and pre-ordering!

    So I would expect that the exit strategy includes all that yummy info the unit collects during operation, the scope of which can be legally covered by privacy policy changes, and technically covered by those automatic updates.

    1. Mike Flugennock

      Re: No thanks

      Those Terms Of Service remind me of an old Peanuts strip in which Lucy goes around to all the other kids with some kind of document and requests that they "sign this, please, it absolves me of all blame."

      Not to mention that many of the people who worked on this little stinker were also responsible for Google Nest.

      Settings in the Cloud? Integrating all the Internet Of Shit devices in your house? Built by the designers of Google Nest? D'ahh, what could possibly go wrong?

  4. Martin Summers Silver badge

    Unknown Devices?

    Will text you when unknown devices have joined your network? How about not letting unknown devices on my network in the first place thanks very much!

  5. Mike Flugennock
    Facepalm

    You had me at the words "A San Francisco start-up..."

    ...at which point I immediately thought oh, Christ, more doucheware...

  6. OllyL

    Hasn't this been done (better) before?

    An apartment building that a friend lives in was wired up with OpenMesh units...I picked up a couple on ebay as I was curious and was quietly impressed (the online management portal was pretty tidy too).

    Also, why would people not use the homeplug wifi extenders? I put one from TP-Link I think into the inlaws place and it cloned their existing wifi network using the WPS button and was running (without the customary halving of bandwidth) in minutes...not bad for 40quid or so from Maplin (had to buy the kit which had one wifi plug and one regular one in it)...also better than this 'new' product.

    These two solutions also appear not to have the current habit of wanting to know everything about you and broadcasting all the data they can collect back to some social outfit on the West coast either

    1. Bassey

      Re: Hasn't this been done (better) before?

      They ARE cool (I have two) but, if I've understood it correctly, this configuration would solve one major problem the those (or any) repeaters. With repeaters, your device sees it as another wifi network that just happens to have the same SSID and security as the original Which is fine for static devices but a real PITA for laptops, tablets, phones etc. If I have my laptop in the living room it will attach to the homeplug WiFi extender - fine. If I then wander down to the other end of the house, it can still JUST ABOUT hold onto that signal - which it does, even if the signal is so poor that bandwidth is abysmal and even though it is now within 3m of the original router! I have to manually switch it over (or, actually, just hit the function key that toggles WiFi off and on again. When it switches back on it connects to the strongest signal).

      A mesh doesn't have that problem as the device only sees one network and the mesh devices sort out all the complicated handover stuff in the same way a mobile phone network does.

      1. Badvok
        FAIL

        @Bassey

        There is this novel (last 20 years or so) concept called 'web search', there are a number of players in the game but pretty much any one you pick will allow you to search for 'wi-fi roaming settings' along with the model of your laptop and I bet you'll find out how to sort out your problem.

    2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

      Re: Hasn't this been done (better) before?

      > Also, why would people not use the homeplug wifi extenders?

      Because they are the radio equivalent of putting your heavy metal concert grade hifi on volume 11 so you can listen to it at the end of the garden - works for you, pity if anyone else doesn't share your tastes. By design, these units squirt lots of radio energy into cabling that (not by design, but by being designed for something else - ie power carrying) are not radio cables. So you turn your home wiring into a big antenna sending out loads of radio interference across huge swathes of the spectrum.

      Over here in the UK, it's largely radio amateurs leading the fightback - and the "we want the money, sod everyone else" industry tends to label it as a bunch of beardies with a niche hobby.

      But it's not just the amateur radio bands it affects : FM radio, check; TV, check; ADSL, check (via cross coupling into the phone lines), and the list goes on.

      The vendors of this c**p know it causes interference, they know it's actually illegal and thanks to the laws of physics cannot be made legal - but for some reason our own regulators seem to be spending a lot of effort justifying it as "not our department". The manufacturers/importers have actually gone so far as to try and get the law changed (ie to relax the rules on "not c***ing all over the spectrum") so as to make them legal.

      The manufacturers/importers get it though interference testing by fitting filters between the unit and the socket - thus preventing the radio signals from reaching any mains wiring. Pity they don't have to demonstrate compliance while actually working !

      http://www.ban-plt.org.uk - you'll find it enlightening

  7. Paul Smith

    Cool!

    A project for my new Raspberry Pi!

  8. Zilla

    Overpriced and designed for plebs....

    Alternatively you should look into Ubiquiti UniFi.

    I just put 3 of their fantastic Unifi AP's into my house and I can now max out my 80mbit internet connection no matter where I go. It's bloody fantastic.

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