(Posted this elsewhere and didn’t get a response.)
Would it be better to get three eeros connected wirelessly to each other, two of them wired to Apple TVs, or an eero and two beacons, with the beacons near the Apple TVs?
How much would optimal placement be compromised by needing to wire near the Apple TVs?
Would it be more convenient to plug the beacons into wall outlets?
Hm. Good questions.
I think this would be okay, as TVs are on opposite ends of the house, but on different floors. The eero could be very near to the Apple TVs.
Sure.
I guess my underlying question is:
Apple TV <-- wireless --> Beacon <-- wireless --> eero
-- or --
Apple TV <-- wire --> eero <-- wireless --> eero
would give better performance.
And I guess that is, in essence, whether the beacon to eero wireless is as good as eero to eero wireless.
Got it. I think that it would be faster, then, to do three Eeros since you’ll wire in and you’ll have two 5ghz bands of WiFi in the whole house, but I don’t know if you’d notice the difference unless you have a lot of active devices. The wireless latency between the beacons and the Apple TV is going to be unnoticeable.
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I agree with @cornchip; 3 eeros would preserve all of your wireless bandwidth for your wifi devices. The backhaul would be handled by ethernet, so no wifi bandwidth would be needed for the backhaul.
I have a 3-eero network in my home and have been very happy with it. When only my wife and I are home there are usually about 23 devices on the network. Not all of those are wireless, of course, but most are. Even our two iMac computers have wifi connections, in addition to ethernet. It’s amazing how fast the number of wifi devices adds up - Macs, iPhones, iPads, watches, AppleTVs, Ooma VOIP, Ring doorbells, printer, Alexa, Tablo, and whatever IOT devices you might have - thermostats, etc.
When our adult kids and their families visit for holidays, the number devices can go into the mid-thirties. One of my sons likes to play interactive games on his iPhone. This apparently requires a lot of bandwidth. He used to complain about my older network which had first-generation eeros (dual-band radios). My newer network with second-generation eeros (tri-band radios) is much better in these high-usage situations; there are no more complaints. I’m pretty sure that the limitation is available the wi-fi bandwidth, not the total bandwidth available from my ISP.
One feature that distinguishes eero from other mesh systems is the ability to connect the secondary devices by ethernet for the backhaul. Take advantage of this feature if you have available ethernet wiring. Your need for additional wifi bandwidth will inevitably go up in the future.
I just installed for the 2nd time a set of 3 Eero’s and am very impressed with the coverage and performance.
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Just want to be sure we’re on the same page, my setup with 3 eeros would only be wired from eero to Apple TV. Am I correct that by backhaul you mean back to the router? If so, that would also be wireless for me.
My apology … I misunderstood your proposed eero setup and incorrectly assumed a wired connection between eeros.
Yes, I use the term backhaul to mean the network traffic from the “secondary” eeros back to the router (or the “primary” eero).
Referring back to your original question (3 eeros vs. 1 eero and two beacons), I think there would still be a theoretical advantage to using 3 eeros for your situation. The ethernet connection from two eeros to AppleTVs would free up wireless bandwidth that could be shared among all other wireless devices and the wireless backhaul traffic. I have no idea whether this theoretical advantage would translate into a practical advantage, though. It probably depends on how many wireless devices you have in use at any given time and how much bandwidth each device consumes. Another consideration is determining what really constrains your network - bandwidth available from your ISP or your local network wifi bandwidth. Interesting thought problem!
You might try calling eero technical support to ask that question. Eero’s tech support is excellent.
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Thanks for the follow up!
Great idea. I’ll do that.
I’m 100% wireless. I have one Eero base unit connected to the router, and two beacons. We have 2 xboxes, 3 apple tvs and a slew of computers / idevices.
I was going to wire the TVs and / or the xBoxes but have never found that I needed to.
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So what did you decide and how is it working out for you ?-)
I switched everything over to 5GHz on the AirPort Extreme, and so far it’s taken care of nearly all the beach balls on Apple TVs and devices.
I’m going to hold off on dropping 4 or 5 bills right now.
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I make a living as an iT consultant and contribute here for free. If I spend the time giving answers and free advice spending time finding recommendations at least we can make a few cents.
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I haven’t seen this happening, have you?
How much time would it take for the mods to police this?
If you look before I have participated in this discussion and just gave a quick advice.
My understanding is that Discourse has good drive-by-spam prevention built in. So, links could only come from established users.
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Oh yeah, I don’t have a problem.
I appreciate your contributions to the group, and to answering my questions.
I’ve probably posted links to Amazon that support the Fistula Foundation, my favorite charity.
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