Putting new Wifi into my home

I have one Wifi WAP and it is in my office, and two floors above is my wife’s office and she works via Wifi.  So she doesn’t have the best Wifi service.  I wanted to improve it but was not sure exactly what would be the best option.  Then I saw this article by by Paul Braren. He suggested eero. Here is their technology tidbits.

His article got me thinking and I Googled and explored a bit and decided to give it a try.  The biggest thing I learned was that approximately 550 USD for a three pack in the US is actually 1200 CAD.  Not good.  But if it performed well it would likely be worth it.  But we will see. So lets get it working.

I wanted it to operate with the security of my current Wifi as I did not want people or devices to be impacted. I wanted to bring online eero and once it was working to turn off my current Wifi and nobody notice!

The packaging of eero is very nice and it seems quite easy to work with. I like the fact there is an app for it. I hope for a cloud access too one day.

I reached out to support to see about my idea and they were easy to deal with and quick. I could have called and it likely would have been faster.

I cannot merge the two Wifi networks - old and new, but it turned out to be easy. Make sure I had my old WAP name (SID) and the password and turn off the old Wifi. Setup eero - only one unit first, and after it is running, and updated, change the network name to my old WAP name - and remember case sensitive, and then update the password. I also turned on the bridge mode as DNS / DHCP is available already on my network.  In that mode I cannot use profiles which means no parental controls.  But I can live with that.

Most of my devices did not even notice. One - Canary did - and I restarted it. But other appliances like Dropcam managed it fine. So did my Macs.

Then I did the install on the next unit, and upgraded it, and then the next, and upgraded it.

There is one feature in this new Wifi that I think is particularly interesting.  As my wife or I get closer to the house we hook up with 2.4 GHz radio and normally we would be stuck on that and get less performance as a result.  With this new gear it will move us to 5 GHz as we get closer to it.  So better performance.

Next I used the Ookla software Speedtest and used my iPad that only has Internet and tested the performance around the house and it was most certainly better in most places and in my very full and busy office it was about the same. And yet, now I have a Wifi mesh, steerable beams, guest network that works with text invites, and push updates as necessary. So I am better off now and I think it will get better.

I will let you know in the future if I am still happy!

Updates:

• 12/5/16 - I have not had to look at the UI since I installed it.  All works fine, and I have occasionally did a speedtest - on my Apple TV and on an iPad in a variety of places to make sure all is still good and it is.

Michael

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