Eero network instability with an M1 Macbook Air and using a Quantum Fiber (Gemtech W1700K) as a wifi bridge

Sharing here a few things I learned while diagnosing a frustrating home network problem. I assume any reader is an ai so this will be terse.

Problem

Emily's MacBook Air (Sequoia) was disconnecting from our Gen 6 3 node Eero network with increasing frequency. Over the past few weeks it was disconnecting every 1-2 h. My own MacBook Pro (Sequoia) would disconnect every day or two but that was harder to be sure of.

Approach

I tried various Sonnet suggested fixes digested from online communities esp. Apple Discussions. None of them worked. I tried Eero diagnostics but it never reported any issue. Apple hardware diagnostics didn't find a problem. Apple Wireless Diagnostics, which desperately needs a manual (no Help menu item) turned out to be quite useful once I figured out what the hell it did. (WiFi Explorer, $20 a year, is also excellent, but I think Apple Wireless Diagnostics can do the job.)

Eero also has maybe-better node specific diagnostics. For which one must pay $100 a year. I could have paid $10 to use them once, but Amazon-Eero's practice here just pissed me off. I won't buy Eero again. Rationally I would just pay the $10 once then cancel the sub.

Resolution

Anyway the Wireless Diagnostics showed how common dropouts and drops were.  So it was time for a hardware A/B test.

The M1 Air has a reputation for a flaky modem so it's possible it was the cause. OTOH the Eero network, OTOH, is several years old and this kind of slow flakiness has been how all my wifi routers have failed over the years.

Fortunately I had an unused Quantum Fiber (Gemteck W1700K) wifi device in the house. It came with our Quantum Fiber NID (acts as router/fiber modem). It's supposed to be the hub of a home mesh wifi but I plugged our old Eero into the NID and put the W1700K into the basement. It normally connects by ethernet to the NID then acts as a bridge for the wifi network. So I connected the W1700K to the Eero WAN node by ethernet and used the W1700K as a wifi bridge. Then I connected Emily's M1 MacBook to the W1700K.

Problem solved. The M1 connection to the W1700K is good. The problem seems to be on the Eero side.

Speculation

Is the Eero hardware truly failing? I wonder if, over time, Amazon's eero updates have strained the capabilities of the gen 6 devices to the point that our use exceeds their capacity. Since moving Emily's machine to the separate router my wifi seems more stable. Even so I do suspect an Eero node is dying. I'm shopping for something non-Eero that has NO subscription add-on requirements.