Eero 6 ethernet (wired) connection cannot ssh into my pihole, whereas wi-fi can

Hello everybody,

I recently bought and setup Pi-hole on the Raspberry Pi device with ubuntu OS.
I connected it to my modem (eero 6), and tired to ssh into it.

I noticed that when I am connected to my wifi, I can ssh into it successfully. However, when I try the same from my desktop PC (wired - ethernet connection to modem), it always times out.
My desktop has inbuild wifi and when I disconnected the ethernet cable and connected it via wi-fi, it was able to ssh into it.

Can somebody help me to find out why? I would like to be able to ssh into my device primarily through my desktop, via ethernet cable.

I have Raspberry Pi 5 Model B, 8GB RAM, 24.04 Ubuntu, Pi-hole 5.18.3 and eero6 with the latest firmware installed.

Can you access the internet via the ethernet but just can't ssh or does nothing work on ethernet?

If you can access the internet but not ssh, open a terminal / command prompt and see if you can ping the piholes IP address. If you can't, try and ping the gateway itself.

Try to check if firewall on on ubuntu is enabled and if maybe a rule is active for a specific IP.
Alternatively you may try to use the same ip on the wired interface as you have on the wifi on the desktop pc and see if you can connect.

sudo ufw status numbered

Yes, I can access the internet via Ethernet cable just fine,

No, I cannot ping neither Pihole IP address nor the gateway, which is weird.

To me it seems as if eero 6 would consider the ethernet as a separate network from wi-fi, although they are under one and the same profile, and we have only one profile.

It should not. You should be on the same network regaurdless of medium ( wifi or physical cable ). I'm not sure if your pc is Windows or not but check the ethernet address of the pc when connected via ethernet vs when connected via wifi. If its windows this can be done via a command prompt using ipconfig.

Ipconfig provides this:

Windows IP Configuration

Ethernet adapter Ethernet 4:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : internetbolaget.nu

Ethernet adapter Ethernet 2:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : internetbolaget.nu
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::f755:1a9b:a616:6805%19
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 100.76.22.57
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.240.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : fe80::200:10ff:fe01:0%19
100.76.16.1

Unknown adapter local connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : lightbeam.com

Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi 2:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Wireless LAN adapter local connection* 3:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Wireless LAN adapter local connection* 4:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

That´s completely different than my wi-fi gateway (192.168.4.1)

This appears to me that your getting an IP from your ISP when connected to your ethernet. The subnet makes me think this is a cgnat address ( not sure ).

You can try and do a tracert bing.com when connected to ethernet vs wifi and compare the 1st several hops. It would be interesting to see the differences.

That is a CGNAT address, from the 100.64.0.0/10 shared address space as used for customer IP address allocation exclusive to your ISP (similar to private range IPs in home networks).
This would indicate that your Windows machine has a direct link to your ISP, rather than through a router connected to your ISP.

Is your Windows desktop PC's ethernet cable plugged into your router, or does it perhaps go into your ISP's modem?

Good question:

Desktop PC is connected via ethernet cable to a white box mounted on a wall (I assume(!) that is ISP modem), and wi-fi router is connected to it be a separate ethernet cable.

Could you clarify above?
Are you running two wifi routers, or did a typo creep in there somehow?

Sorry, it was typo, I just edited the former response, now it should be correct.

The client devices that you want to use Pi-hole for DNS need to be in the same subnet as Pi-hole, or they'd need a route to your Pi-hole machine.

You'd have to find out what that white box is.

If it is your ISP commissioned router, you'd have to learn how to configure it.

If that white box turns out to be your ISP's modem, you'd have to connect your desktop PC to your wifi router to have it filtered by Pi-hole, either via wifi or your wifi router's ethernet ports.

If your wifi router does not have enough ethernet ports (or not any at all), it may be worth considering to acquire a router that does.

You can try and do a tracert bing.com when connected to ethernet vs wifi and compare the 1st several hops. It would be interesting to see the differences.

Here´s the result:

Ethernet:
Tracing route to bing.com [13.107.21.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 General failure.

Trace complete.

Wi-fi:
Tracing route to bing.com [204.79.197.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 2 ms 2 ms 192.168.4.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 20 ms 13 ms 14 ms 185.176.244.21
4 14 ms 21 ms 23 ms 185.176.244.20
5 11 ms 12 ms 12 ms 10.200.15.5
6 14 ms 14 ms 12 ms 185.176.244.6
7 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms 185.176.244.19
8 17 ms 11 ms 11 ms oso-b1-link.ip.twelve99.net [213.248.68.170]
9 13 ms 11 ms 11 ms microsoft-ic-355176.ip.twelve99-cust.net [62.115.190.59]
10 14 ms 13 ms 12 ms 13.104.140.15
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 15 ms 12 ms 14 ms a-0001.a-msedge.net [204.79.197.200]

Trace complete.

If that white box turns out to be your ISP's modem, you'd have to connect your desktop PC to your wifi router to have it filtered by Pi-hole, either via wifi or your wifi router's ethernet ports.

It actually does have one more Ethernet port, but that is where Pyhole is being connected.

I tried in the past connect the ethernet cable for my desktop directly to Wi-fi router, but it seems it is not working (my app for setting the wi-fi was not registering it at all and I had no connection to internet whatsoever) but it is worth a shot, let me tinker with it for a while, I will respond once I am done.

You'd have to find out what that white box is.

So apparently that white box is fiberwtiwst-P3410B from Genexis.
Trying to find a way to login into it, but so far no luck.

There doesn´t seem to be a way to login to fibertwist.

If your wifi router does not have enough ethernet ports (or not any at all), it may be worth considering to acquire a router that does.

My desktop ethernet is connected to port 1 on fibertwist.
Wi-fi eero 6 router is connected to port 2. Eero 6 itself has only 2 ethernet ports and one microUSB(?) port for electricity outlet connection.

I could connect the eero directly to port 1 from fibertwist and connect my desktop PC via ethernet to port 2 from the eero (haven´t tried that yet), but then I have nowhere to connect the pyhole itself.

And since I want both, my wi-fi AND my ethernet be covered by pyhole, I might actually need to resort to buying another router just for that (my provider supports EG400 for example), and replace the Eero crap (why it just can´t he one more Ethernet port?).

Dang, I was hoping I doesn´t have to come to that.

Well, thanks for helping me figuring that out (all this time I thought I might just not have something connected properly)

You could also purchase a 5 port switch. They are far less than a new router. Plug the eero 6 to the fibertwist and the switch into the other port on the eero 6. Then you would have 4 additional ports for your use.

Alteratively you could try and use the 2nd ethernet port of the eero for your laptop and run the pi on the 5Ghz wifi or even off an ethernet port on one of the mesh nodes. I'm assuming that your backhaul between the mesh nodes is wireless so the experience would likely be the same.

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Thanks for the info - my port switch finally arrived and I had a time to set it up - it is working!

Finally I could ssh into my raspbery PI and finish my setup, now everything works as intended.
Huge thanks to all of you to help me figure it out!