Introducing eero Labs: Building the future of home WiFi

Now available

At eero, we live and breathe WiFi. We’re dedicated to making sure eero networks continue to stay new and get better from our automatic updates to both our software and eero app. As we continue to make innovations in the whole home WiFi space, our team is constantly experimenting with the latest technologies and concepts to bring the future of WiFi more quickly to eero customers.

Like us, we know that many of you are also interested in these emerging technologies and are eager to try them out. We wanted to find a way to bring eero customers along on the journey, and today, we’re introducing eero Labs — an innovation playground for your eero network.

eero Labs features are cutting edge and experimental. Every feature is tested extensively but is still in beta and will continue to be improved over time. By default, all features are disabled — however, you can quickly enable (or disable) these features from within the eero app.

Smart Queue Management

With the launch of eero Labs, we will be introducing our first feature: Smart Queue Management (SQM) — the ability for all your connected devices to simply and fairly share your network’s available bandwidth.

Unlike a traditional Quality of Service feature (QoS), which only allows specific devices to receive priority bandwidth at the expense of others, SQM works automatically across your whole system – removing confusing manual steps from the process, and making the overall internet experience better at any given moment. While eero can always handle simultaneous connections, with SQM, performing tasks like backing up large amounts of data won’t potentially prevent you from also streaming 4K content, playing online video games, and simply browsing the web.

Getting started

To get started with eero Labs, make sure you are using the latest eero app version (min 2.17). From there, you can enable SQM from the eero Labs section within Network Settings (from the main menu). eero Labs features are default off and can be toggled on at any time.

What’s next?

Our team is hard at work on bringing forward new, innovative features for your eero network. Here is a preview of other features that we’re looking into and hope to launch in eero Labs soon:

Band steering:
Many devices are dual-band capable, meaning they support both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. 5 GHz is typically less crowded and offers higher performance. Band steering tracks whether a device has previously been seen on both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and if so attempts to “steer” it to 5 GHz on subsequent associations. Band steering does not guarantee that a device will choose the 5 GHz band, but band steering further helps to favor that preference.

DNS Caching:
Unlike traditional caching, which stores local information on a website to improve page load times, DNS caching allows this information to be stored at the network level to provide improved network performance across all devices instead of just a specific device or browser.

As soon as a new eero Labs release is available, your network will be automatically ready to try these new features with eero’s over-the-air updates.

Share your feedback

While we have various upcoming lab projects in the pipeline, we want to hear what eero customers want to see and encourage you to share your feedback directly with our development team in the eero community. This is your opportunity to help shape the future of eero and whole home WiFi!