[SOLVED] Help Using Asus Zen Wifi AX6600 With eero 6 Pro

Dec 4, 2021
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Hi all,

I'm a networking novice and have always used eero products because of their simplicity, though recognizing these probably aren't the most robust technically versus some other products. I purchased a 3 pack of Asus AX6600s and the speed was amazing. However, I couldn't get them to work consistently through the house. Unfortunately, I went beyond the return window and still have these today sitting in a closet.

I instead purchased eero 6 pros (3- pack) given my familiarity with them and the ease of use. These have been good performers with my 1GB service, though I have a few deadspots in the house.

I would like to know how I might use the Asus routers I have (perhaps has repeaters?) along with my eero 6 pro setup. I want to use eero 6 pro as the main mesh network, but it would be great to infill the slower areas of the house (4,000sf, 2-story) with the Asus routers.

Can anyone provide a resource that might indicate whether I can use the spare Asus products and if so, how I might go about doing so? I'm not savvy with the depth of the Asus settings, but know my way around the basic eero settings fairly well.

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
First plan very carefully you layout of your wifi. With wifi less competing signals is more total usable bandwidth. If you put too much wifi in the house all they do is stomp on each other. You generally get better performance with slightly weaker signals but less competition. Not much you can do about your neighbors though.

Now if you are running some form or wired backhaul then you can put a wifi source in every room just turn the power down so the siganls do not leave the room.

I guess it depends on what you think mesh is going to buy you. They are basically a repeater with some software that makes them a bit easier to get installed. You likely can run use the asus boxes as simple repeaters and connect to the...

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Hi all,

I'm a networking novice and have always used eero products because of their simplicity, though recognizing these probably aren't the most robust technically versus some other products. I purchased a 3 pack of Asus AX6600s and the speed was amazing. However, I couldn't get them to work consistently through the house. Unfortunately, I went beyond the return window and still have these today sitting in a closet.

I instead purchased eero 6 pros (3- pack) given my familiarity with them and the ease of use. These have been good performers with my 1GB service, though I have a few deadspots in the house.

I would like to know how I might use the Asus routers I have (perhaps has repeaters?) along with my eero 6 pro setup. I want to use eero 6 pro as the main mesh network, but it would be great to infill the slower areas of the house (4,000sf, 2-story) with the Asus routers.

Can anyone provide a resource that might indicate whether I can use the spare Asus products and if so, how I might go about doing so? I'm not savvy with the depth of the Asus settings, but know my way around the basic eero settings fairly well.

Thanks in advance.
It is unlikely that the Asus and the Eero will mesh. Typically vendors restrict what will mesh to their products. That "encourages" you to buy their products.
 
First plan very carefully you layout of your wifi. With wifi less competing signals is more total usable bandwidth. If you put too much wifi in the house all they do is stomp on each other. You generally get better performance with slightly weaker signals but less competition. Not much you can do about your neighbors though.

Now if you are running some form or wired backhaul then you can put a wifi source in every room just turn the power down so the siganls do not leave the room.

I guess it depends on what you think mesh is going to buy you. They are basically a repeater with some software that makes them a bit easier to get installed. You likely can run use the asus boxes as simple repeaters and connect to the eero....not sure I about that brand but WDS is how they make pretty much all the repeater function work.
 
Solution
Dec 4, 2021
7
0
10
First plan very carefully you layout of your wifi. With wifi less competing signals is more total usable bandwidth. If you put too much wifi in the house all they do is stomp on each other. You generally get better performance with slightly weaker signals but less competition. Not much you can do about your neighbors though.

Now if you are running some form or wired backhaul then you can put a wifi source in every room just turn the power down so the siganls do not leave the room.

I guess it depends on what you think mesh is going to buy you. They are basically a repeater with some software that makes them a bit easier to get installed. You likely can run use the asus boxes as simple repeaters and connect to the eero....not sure I about that brand but WDS is how they make pretty much all the repeater function work.
Thanks for your thorough reply. I appreciate it.

I already own the mesh network, so that's what I have to work with. But your point about too much being a bad thing is interesting.

What I keep bumping into is that my connection in several areas of the house are still unstable (often in the living room where there is no node), with connectivity periodically being lost, but mostly situations where the wifi indicator on my laptop isn't at the full number of "bars." When the latter happens, I run speedtest.net, and it gives a relatively low download speed (e.g. 100). I believe that should be more than adequate, yet the living room (for example) has an apple tv that sometimes buffers.

I tried moving a node to the living room, but then the MBR apple tv (MBR is on main floor, maybe 20 feet from living room) buffers.

ETA: no wired backhaul as house isn't wired (and builder would not give me that option).

House construction is new (2021), if that's helpful.

I feel like I'm chasing my tail on this.
 
Did they put coax tv cable in the rooms. You can use MoCA and the newer units run full gigabit speed. Did they run phone lines...does anyone really use land lines anymore. You might be able to convert the phone to ethernet depending on how the wires run.

What a repeater does it trade signal strength for signal quality and speed. The still gets damaged between the main router and the repeater the repeater must delay to get a clean copy and then retransmit it with the chance it gets damaged again.

Wifi would work great with a fairly weak signal if there was no interference from your neighbors. Almost all your issue are likely caused by the signal being damaged. Adding more wifi nodes is like turning your stereo up because the neighbor has his on too loud.

Even in the best case using repeater you are going to lose 1/2 the bandwidth and many times it is much more. It takes very careful placement so the repeater gets enough signal from the main router but can still transmit it to the remote room.

I still would try every other option before you use your "mesh" system as a repeater. Even if you can't use moca you should be able to use powerline networks. The one thing that concerns me is on a very new house in the USA they likely used arc fault breakers. Some brands of these block powerline networks so if you buy powerline network be sure it can be returned if you get unlucky.
 
Dec 4, 2021
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This is incredibly helpful information and I greatly appreciate your expertise!

Yes, there are coax cable connections in each room. I have never heard of MoCA (not a surprise), but that approach sounds very promising. Could you direct me to a good resource so that I might get myself up to speed with how to do this? I could google it, but I suspect you have knowledge of the most accurate sources for this approach.

Thanks again for your insight.
 
The ones people like a lot are made by gocoax even though lately that have a number of competitors.

They have a network speed to 2.5g and you can get units with 2.5g ports. Not sure how well then work at 2.5g but you can easily get gigabit speeds. The performance is impressive for a box that cost about $60 each.

They have some pretty good diagrams how you hook them up. It is trivial when you only have moca boxes and is slightly more complex when you have cable tv boxes. Pretty much you hook all the coax together with a splitter and then put a moca box in each room and they all run single network like they were on a switch.
You would then hook your current wifi mesh systems up to the moca via ethernet and run them as AP.
 
Dec 4, 2021
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Hoping you can help with a few more things as I'm about to purchase the gocoax box.

I have cable coax wall ports throughout the house. The 1Gb Spectrum service required me to select only one room to install the cable modem. The tech had to go outdoors and make sure that the cable internet was "selected" for my office. So it seems that the signal is coming into my home office.

I'm having trouble visualizing the install of the gocoax box. Do I take the coax cable coming out of the office coax port on the wall and attach that to the coax port on the gocoax box? And then do I need another piece of coax cable that goes from the gocoax box and into the cable modem? (We do NOT have cable TV, just internet.) And then cable modem via ethernet to eero (set to access point)? I don't have access to any splitters as any such devices must be in our walls. (We have no basement in Florida.)

Separately, I read that I should have a MoCA POE filter where the cable comes into the house (at my home office?) to prevent my signal being accessed by neighbors. In fact, my cable modem has a frequency up to 1218MHz, and the POE filter website therefore says I need two POE filters installed. Do they connect to the coax cable coming out of the office wall and connect to each other before connecting to the gocoax?

Apologies for all the questions, but I'm very turned around by the install. Thanks in advance for your input!
 
Dec 4, 2021
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Actually, I found where the source of the cable is that comes into the house. It's on a box on the side of the house. It's a jumble of cords and I would have no idea how to do anything in that box to put in two PEO filters -- let alone whether there would be room for those in the outside box.

How necessary are PEO filters?

Thanks
 
For as much as you’ve spent on wifi equipment, you could have had a professional run some cat 6 ethernet to a few spots in the house. That would give you a wired full 1gb internet connection to all these access point. Anything connecting to each access point would have great speeds and if you’re in the same room as an ethernet port, you can hardwire it for full 1gb internet.