I ve a networking story that s surprising to me; but maybe not to the KITAs

[G+_Robert Hafer]

I’ve a networking story that’s surprising to me; but maybe not to the KITAs.

In my home I have 3 eero pro mesh routers and Ethernet that run from the room with the cable modem to an upstairs bedroom and my basement study. The switch that connects the Ethernet runs, plus a few devices, to the gateway eero just went south. Those devices I switches to WiFi. But in the bedroom and study I have the satellite eeros plugged into he switches for wired backhaul. What surprised me is that the eeros switched over automatically to bridging my network.

Is this expected mesh behavior or special eero sauce?

[G+_Black Merc]

'Is this expected mesh behavior or special eero sauce?' in short, yes.

Mesh networks are very good at 'healing' from connection loss due to the ability to utilize secondary or tershiary(3rd) connections to reroute traffic.

[G+_William L. DeRieux IV]

Black Merc

Robert Hafer

 

That's the beauty of a mesh network (multipath routing) -- in a grid system every node is connected to 4 other nodes (so if 1 goes down, there are three other immediate nodes that can be used).

 

But, there is a trade-off here....you are sacrificing network performance in exchange for connectivity (and vice versa).

 

If a node fails over to another node it might not be the best choice (the shortest path with the least cost) to get to another specific node -- this could impact network performance, but you are assured that the all nodes on the network will still be in operation.

 

PS: This is the same technique that is used in the National US electric grid to workaround damaged or downed transmission lines.

[G+_Robert Hafer]

I have noticed a small drop in performance; Speedtest on bedroom Apple TV dropped from average 120 Mbps to about 95 Mbps, still plenty though.

Kind of makes me want to add a node at the main entertainment center just for the redundancy.