What is Wifi Radio Analytics?

Wifi Radio Analytics is an eero Plus feature (eero App 6.32.0+) that shows advanced wireless details like channel busyness, noise floor, and the channels and bandwidth used by your eeros.

Channel busyness is a major factor in your wifi network's performance. Lower channel busyness means better device performance. Higher channel busyness can cause performance issues. Busyness can be affected by several factors including interference from non-wifi devices (like baby monitors) and neighboring wifi networks.

Wifi Radio Analytics lets you check for channel congestion and view channel busyness on your network. Select supported eero models to view activity across all available radio bands including 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz (if supported). View 6 or 24 hours of data and see specific periods by tapping the graph. Navigate with the arrow buttons to view data up to 48 hours back.

Note: Gen 1 eero devices, eero Built-in enabled Echo devices, and eero PoE Gateway are not supported.

To enable this feature:

1. Open the eero App
2. Tap the Home tab
3. Tap the eero you want to monitor
4. Tap Wifi radio analytics

Note: iOS users need iOS 16 or later for full visibility into this feature.

How does channel busyness affect my network performance?

Wifi is limited to "half-duplex" — when two devices communicate, only one can transmit at a time, like walkie-talkies. As more devices connect, each must wait for the channel to clear before transmitting.

Without an "air control tower" to coordinate transmissions, wireless devices must coordinate like cars on a busy highway. This limits available transmission time.

Channel busyness helps measure this limitation. Low busyness means plenty of time to transmit. Higher busyness means more congestion, slowing or stopping data transmission.

The effects vary based on how you use your network. Simple applications may not see issues. Bandwidth-intensive applications may see slower downloads.

At near 100% busyness, you'll likely see issues with greater impact like increased latency, dropped packets, or SSIDs not appearing and devices failing to connect.

What do the busyness metrics mean?

Wireless devices share frequencies and must coordinate when sending data. Channel busyness includes both your eero's transmissions and nearby devices on neighboring networks. We separate these into two categories:

• Activity on this radio: The percentage of time the eero radio spends communicating with other devices. Many connected or chatty devices (like baby monitors, security cameras, or laptops) increase this value.
• Other device interference: The percentage of time other devices communicate on the same channels as the eero radio. This includes neighboring networks and other eeros on your network. Check other eeros for higher than normal activity which may be due to a very active device on your network connected to that eero.

Two other important concepts are total busyness and noise floor.

• Total busyness: The sum of "Activity on this radio" and "Other device interference," representing overall channel busyness.
• Noise floor: The noise value (in dBm) on this channel. Noise comes from degraded signals (like those over long distances) or interference from non-wifi devices. Higher noise floors reduce signal-to-noise ratio and impact performance.

What different channel information is available?

We display the following information regarding the channels your eero is using: 

• Channel: The channel being used by the eero. For example, channels 1, 6, or 11 on 2.4 GHz. These combine smaller channels to reach the bandwidth. eero automatically selects channels using Automatic Channel Selection based on your environment.
• Control Channel: The control channel is used for special types of transmissions called management or control frames, which are used to maintain device connectivity and provide coordination between devices. These require much less bandwidth than data frames. The control channel will always be in the same “set” of channels as the Channel mentioned above, but may be a different value than expected.
• Channel Change: When a channel change occurs, you’ll see a line displayed on the graph showing when the change occurred.
• Channel Bandwidth: This is the bandwidth being used by a given eero radio on the channel selected, which will vary depending on the radio and eero model you’ve selected:
  • 2.4 GHz radio:
    • 20 MHz, 40 MHz bandwidth
    • All eero models with wifi
  • 5 GHz radio (80 MHz):
    • All eero models with wifi
  • 5 GHz radio (160 MHz):
    • eero 6+, eero Pro 6E, eero PoE 6, eero Outdoor 7, eero Max 7, eero 7, eero Pro 7, eero PoE 7
  • 6 GHz radio (80, 160 MHz):
    • eero Pro 6E, eero Max 7, eero Pro 7, eero PoE 7
  • 6 GHz radio (320 MHz):
    • eero Max 7, eero Pro 7, eero PoE 7

Note: The eero PoE Gateway has no wifi radio.

What are the differences between “Average busyness”, “P99 busyness”, and “Maximum Busyness”?

Channel busyness varies by time and nearby devices, so we provide three calculation types:

• Average busyness: The average busyness over your selected timeframe. High average busyness indicates a busy home network, many neighboring networks, or both.
• P99 busyness: Since max busyness only captures the peak, P99 (99th percentile) busyness better estimates peak busyness. The average of the worst 1% of channel busyness.
• Maximum busyness: This is the highest channel busyness seen in the selected timeframe. Since your wireless environment can change at any given time, this may be due to a brief spike in busyness during the day (for example when everyone returns home in the evening), but can be helpful in addition to the other two metrics. 

How is Channel busyness calculated? 

Channel busyness compares transmission time to available time. It measures how much time your eero and nearby radios spend transmitting or receiving data versus when the channel is clear.

Your wireless environment changes throughout the day. Maximum busyness captures brief spikes—like when everyone returns home in the evening. Use it alongside average and P99 busyness for a complete picture.

Can I change eero channels? 

eero uses Automatic Channel Selection (ACS) to choose the ideal channel for each band based on routine scans. You can't manually change the channel or bandwidth.

How can I use this data to improve my network?

Channel busyness comes from your network and neighboring networks, so there's no simple way to improve it. Heavy usage periods (like when people return home) are unavoidable, like rush hour traffic. Connecting your devices to eero via Ethernet whenever possible can reduce network busyness.

eero will make use of ACS to try to move to a more ideal channel. However, since there are a limited number of channels available and many of those channels have some overlap with each other, we may not always be able to move to a channel that’s less busy. 

Check "Activity on this radio" to see if traffic is specific to that eero. This helps identify devices causing high busyness.