Friday
I am moving from an old Virgin Media connection over to the Three Outdoor Hub. I was using the old Virgin Hub in modem mode plugged into a TP-Link router running OpenWRT to give me a wired network in my home and a couple of Wi-Fi Access Points. What is the best way to setup the Outdoor Hub? Do I need the Eero thing somewhere in the mix?
I used the Eero to get setup at the start and after that things seemed to work OK for a while with the Outdoor Hub plugged directly into the Wide Area Network port of my old TP-Link AP. Sometimes things drop connection and seem to need me to power cycle the Outdoor Hub to bring back the connection. I can see I get my public IP address on the WAN port of my AP and all seems fine for a while. Is this the correct way to keep operating and if it is, is there anyway to check what is up at the times the network goes offline?
I have a background in electronics, software and a little IT so I should be able to read up on any technical bits needed. I am happy to move over to a new set of network gear if I need to as I have had all my kit over 10 years so an upgrade would be acceptable but I would still like to use the Cat 5e wired network as much as possible to save me fighting with the neighbours for wireless channels as much as possible. So if I have to switch to Eero kit I could do.
Should what I have just keep working with the DHCP assigned address on my old APs WAN port and existing routing setup or am I going to break or confuse something in Three's network that expects the Eero kit to be running somewhere? Nothing I found so far on this forum or suggested by searchs and AI gives a clear answer. A few things suggest I should start doing 5G Outdoor Hub wired into the Eero router/AP and then use the second ethernet port to connect with my AP, instead of connecting directly to the Outdoor hub.
Sorry for the rambling, I just wanted to give as much detail of what I had seen and tried so far in the hope it leads to a good answer soon.
Friday
There is a lot of flexibilty in how you set up your home network and there is no requirement to to use the eero unless you want to. Basically it comes down to whether your TPlink or eero gives you best wifi coverage and speed, you could also have both in different rooms for improved coverage. The key when you have mulitple boxes capable of acting as routers is to ensure that only one is allocating the IP addresses.
Personally I find the eero wifi signal good throughout my house without the need for extenders and I have the spare port of the eero plugged into a simple gigabit network switch for all of my hardwired devices,
There have been a number of reports of the external hub frequently disconnecting from the network and, in some cases, failing to reconnect automatically. These seem to have tailed off recently so hopefully the problems have been resolved but I can provide instructions on hub setting that can reduce disconnection freqency if needed.
I also wrote a little utility to check the hub connection and download logs and settings on a regular basis.
You don't mention if you need to remotely access your home network. The hub appears to prevent remote access even if you open ports on your router. To avoid this I use tailscale to allow access to my home network without the need to open ports or to know my external WAN address which changes with each reconnect
Saturday
> You don't mention if you need to remotely access your home network.
I do not have to do this. Occasionally I have hosted a few game servers for friends were a stable IP address is desirable but in general I do not need to do this.
Thanks for the pointers. I have the TP-Link set as my DHCP server at present with such traffic from the WAN port (with the Outdoor Hub connected) blocked. I will take a look at your utility and also see if I can work out why my LAN looses internet connectivity at times, probably when the 5G hub needs to reconnect.
The Eero did seem to give good coverage but because my property is long and narrow I found I needed at least two access points to get OK front and back coverage. Once we look at the garden behind it is an even harder time. The Virgin cable was in the front corner of the property and sadly the closest 5G mast is in a similar spot right now so my internal WiFi network coverage faces similar issues to before.
