Connecting Eero Mesh via Ethernet - Do I Need a Switch?

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  FlipCrank on 31/01/2021 - 14:36

  I was under the assumption that mesh and WiFi are essentially the same thing, how do you know its faster? Are you still connecting to the router as well as the mesh access points?

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  smashman42 on 31/01/2021 - 15:06

  So to clarify, when you're connected to the primary point your speeds are good, but connected to the secondary slave points your speed is bad? Yes, hard wiring them should in theory help that. With Google WiFi this makes a massive difference so in theory it should with eero too, unless their ethernet ports are just for show.

  Uh, do you have anything functioning as a switch at the moment? (are you trolling here? This is just a fundamental question I'm pretty gobsmacked atm - I'll presume you're serious and try to answer)

  Where are those ports around your house plugged into at the other end?

  The wiring thorugh the walls simply shifts the ends of the cables to different places, it doesn't link anything together without a switch.

  There should be one room either with a stack of ports together in one way or another or perhaps a data cabinet with a patch panel, and that is where you'd link everything together with a switch.
  Usually it would be next to where your main router gets its internet source (phone port for ADSL/VDSL, NTD for FTTP, FTTC, FW, or cable), though it could be in a different place (eg: hidden in a closet) with a cable run through the walls back to the central point. Hopefully the ethernet ports are labelled at both ends so you know what to plug into what in that central location - you can figure it out with trial and error and a laptop, but yeah that'll be tedious if you have a lot of ports in a lot of rooms.

  You would have the internet out port of your primary eero point go into a switch of some form, and then the other ports of the switch connect to the other eero units.
  So it would go switch -> patch cable -> point on the wall leading to another room -> cabling through walls -> point in desired room -> patch cable -> eero unit or PC/other device you want hard wired.

  Ideally you should hard wire as many devices as possible to get the best speeds, as in anything that can be hard wired is, freeing up the wifi for things that can't be hard wired. Hard wiring the eero points together is just step one, so don't just buy the cheapest 5 port gigabit switch you find as you may find out you want 6 things hard wired (3x eero units and 3x PCs/playstations/xboxes/etc) 8 port switches cost hardly any more than 5 port ones, but there can be a price jump to 16 port switches.

  Hope you weren't trolling and that this helps, though if you were serious I figure you're going to have more questions.

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    Seakip on 01/02/2021 - 11:18

    +1

    Thanks very useful reply. Your explanation makes sense - I was wondering why there was such a cluster of ports at one end but now I understand it is just cables going from one port to another. I plugged one of the Eero's into one of the ports in a different rooms then plugged the (router) Eero into each of the 'incoming' ports and it worked!

    So looks like I just need a switch to be able to plug in all the other Eero's/devices to the various ports.

    Thanks!