Eero 6 Pro

I’m trying to figure out whether the wifi 6 capability of the Eero 6 Pro router will help with this situation…or whether I’m better off figuring out how to get an Ethernet cable to the office…or whether it is just a lost cause and what I’m getting is the best I can do unless I can run a cable.

House is on Comcast with 1000 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload speed limit and I’m running an Archer A20 802.11ac router in 5GHz mode. Sitting out by the router in the living room my wife’s M1 MBA (the newest thing we have) gets about 600/40 down/up speeds and back in the office (40 feet or so away in a cinder block house) it gets about 200/40…so I’m losing considerable speed back in the office.

The machine in the office is a 2019 iMac 27 and Speedtest on it back there…connected via 802.11ac is about 300/40…so again it is losing some performance…not surprissince the wifi icon in the menu bar shows 2 bars.

I’m wondering if upgrading the router to a pair of wifi 6 Eero 6 Pros meshed will improve the wifi performance of the iMac. Obviously it will only connect to the Eero at 802.11ac based on the iMac hardware…but should I see some overall performance increase since the Eero mesh connects at wifi 6 speed and a closer base station will give better ac performance between the iMac and the Eero next to it.

It seems like it should…and I can always buy a pair of Eeros and test/return if it’s no better…but if someone has already tried this and failed or succeeded in helping there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Wireless devices are a mix of wifi 5 and wifi 6…iPad Air 4, iPhone XS, my wife’s M1 MBA, my 2015 rMBP which will get replaced as soon as the next Mx MBP ships, and the 2019 iMac which may or may not get replaced by the better Mx mini when it ships…so we are gradually shifting to a wifi 6 household although the iphones will probably not get upgraded until next fall vice in September…and by that point I will want a wifi 6 router anyway.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Unless your household as a very unusually high amount of 2.4MHz band noise, you may be missing out on the ability of those router channels from being able to penetrate walls that might well give you some improvements back in the office.

One or two WiFi6 AP’s should almost certainly improve your situation, but you won’t be able to enjoy that Gig speed without running that 5E or above Ethernet cable.

-Al-

Thanks Al…I tried the 2.4 GHz channels already and throughput was lower. My original idea was that running the cat 6 cable was the optimum solution but it’s a lot harder to do than just tossing a few hundred bucks at the problem. First off…we’re in North Fort Myers FL so nothing will happen until summer is over as it’s just way too hot up there. Running the actual cable…other than the heat and having to muck about in the attic…is more time consuming than anything else. I’ll just run one end down to an unused cable TV outlet in the LR and into the router in the TV cabinet and then down through the closet ceiling in the office/BR and another 6 feet or so over to the computer desk…and actually put in a gigabit switch there anyway so I can get the printer off of wifi as well. The iMac back there is my main Lightroom computer and also the file server for the house…if it gets upgraded to the M2 or whatever that will be for Lightroom use as the file serving is apretty light load.