XE75 Pro and HomeKit (and IoT Network) (and Bell - non bridge modem)
XE75 Pro and HomeKit (and IoT Network) (and Bell - non bridge modem)
I wanted to write a little but of my experience with this Mesh system.
To Start with, my home is 99% HomeKit (WiFi, Thread), with some IKEA Zigbee in the mix via Dirigera Hub.
I have tried to keep it "Clean" as an echo system.
I have about 60 IP Addresses in total in the house (Phones, Switches, Dimmers, Speakers, Sensors etc.).
I was with another provider before - where i could set the modem in "Bridge Mode" but with my current provider there is no option for that (I have read about some DMZ modes but have not explored them further to date).
As I got the new Fiber modem, I had purchased the Nest WiFi Pro (6e) trio, and set it up.
As expected this caused a double NAT to exist (as the modems router had a NAT and the NEST has a NAT.
I saw issues with latency right away, and I was not able to make it work (Even got a 4th node).
I ended up selling the NEST WiFi Pro and got the Bell (ISP) "Pods" - they are made by Plume but OEM as a BELL Pod (6e).
At least no more Double NAT - and the Bell WiFi App was easy enough to use (Albeit a little simple / limited in what you could do with it.).
I later helped a friend of mine that also has Bell, install the XE50 line in his house, fully expecting it not to work well.
But to my surprise it did work well (he does NOT have many smart appliances, and they are NOT HomeKit).
In any event after a month for him with no hiccups, I decided to return the WiFi Pods (You lease them from Bell), and get the XE75 Pro (as I wanted 6e).
Initial setup was okay, even with the Double NAT.
All my devices seemed to latch on (Same SSID/PW as before), and all looked good.
After 2 weeks, I started to see some of the smart devices dropping and re-attaching.
First one to do so was my Smart Doorbell (Netatmo) - it is a canary as it is very sensitive that way - usually it reconnected within 5 minutes.
I then decided to active the "IoT" SSID on the XE75 nodes. This is essentially a new SSID on the 2.4 (and 5)GHz spectrum.
I then decided to migrate most of my IoT Devices over (took 2 days) to the new SSID, and they all started to show up in the Home App on my iOS devices.
Only after one day of this - things fell apart completely - Doorbell refused to even connect when reset (5 tries).
I also decided to test the speed on the IoT network and was shocked that many times of re-joining an already joined IoT network I was told the "Password incorrect".
This struck me as the most strange thing as I had never changed the Password in the first place after setting it up.
Once I was able to join it, the speed was abysmal (no wonder latency or connection drops were frequent).
Loading a google search page took 30 seconds (under 1 sec on the other SSID).
I also tried turning on IPV6 after reading the forums, but this has no affect on my issues.
I also tried changing from Router mode to AccessPoint mode - This needed several reboots for all devices to back back to "working"
But over all there was no effect.
This leads me to believe it is more a radio issue (ran many Optimizations) than it is a Double NAT issue.
I then spoke with TP Link Support and they suggested a wipe all settings and start over (without the IoT network on).
Last night I did a full reset (Delete network in the app, then reset (pin hole) each node, then setup again.
I also rebooted the modem for good measure.
After that I tried to migrate my IoT Devices back to the main SSID, but many of the struggle (was never an issue before).
As of now - I have re-ordered the Bell Pods (this was at least working well) and I intend to return the TPLink system to BestBuy for a refund
I am not sure if there was other steps I could have taken, but reading the forums I also saw that others had issues with the 2.4Ghz band being unstable.
EDIT:
I did go back and re-punchase the XE75 Pro - loaded a beta firmware and it now works much better!
No more drop offs, but some latency that I hope will disappear.
At the moment, I have not enabled the IoT SSID, and all devices are on the same SSID, I have even put the 6Ghz on the same SSID (as Apple recommends)
IPV6 is not enabled.
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The update has eliminated the drop off of my 2.4Ghz clients! - Yay!
I sometimes still see latency when using them via the Home App, 1-2 seconds at the most.
Looking at the logs, there seems to be some issues with the radio but it seems to be able to recover fast enough.
Looking at any log file will show you issues ;)
I will attempt to pull wires for back-haul but it is a long term project as I would need to cut open walls and at the same time keep the wife calm :)
Hoping to see further improvement going forward.
/Jonas
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Currently the only official release offered via the app is 1.2.9 - when will 1.2.10 be release to the public?
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@Jonas-Homekit You can download 1.2.10 from the website. That's what I am running on our network right now. But still running into issues.
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Thanks , I am currently running 1.2.8 Build 20231204 Rel. 64082.
So far not any of the issues I saw before has resurfaced.
Only stubborn device is my Netatmo Doorbell camera - but it is known not to play well with mesh networks and would require the separate 2.4 GHz network to be stable.
I have yet to enable IoT network as I would need some mentioned to this in the release notes of improved stability.
/Jonas
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Going here https://www.tp-link.com/ca/support/download/deco-xe75-pro/v3/#Firmware
I only see the 1.2.9. I am on V3 hardware BTW.
/Jonas
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@XWEBNetwork , it is out now and available from within my APP.
@David-TP , is this release better than what I have installed on my XE75 (1.2.8 Build 20231204 Rel. 64082) ??
Should I update and revert back if I see issues?
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Hello there!
I have been running the "beta" firmware for a few weeks now.
It is much more "stable" from a network point of view, but still has moments when the nodes will disconnect from the "main" one.
Sometimes they reconnect and sometimes I need to restart the entire network.
I have realized when I have the 6Ghz network on the same SSID name as the 5Ghz, it is much less stable (only having 2 6Ghz clients).
I also enabled the IoT network (2.4Ghz only) and this part made all my IoT devices much more responsive.
I feel like soon there must be an official release that I can download and use rather than this in-official version.
/Jonas
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I ended up buying a BE85 and set that as the main unit for my XE75's, with the assumption that more processing power would help...
And it definitely has. Still some quirks with IOT stuff, but I haven't had to reboot the network since. And its been about a month.
Kind of ridiculous though and it would suggest that the XE75's are still buggy as all hell. As I have mentioned to TPLink in the past, the M5's in the same config worked just fine. So the XE75's must just be incredibly innefficient in leveraging their hardware.
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That is quite an expensive work around ;)
I will hope that Firmware keeps updating so that I can use them as intended and as advertized.
at the moment, I have about 50% of the clients in the IoT network (2.4 only), and the rest on the 5Ghz.
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