I'm going to tell you a story about a a paid professional Wi-Fi installation that was done completely wrong — and how nobody noticed until I walked in the door.
This story is also why SageTech exists.
"My aunt called me a day or two after Geek Squad installed her new Eero system. Devices were randomly disconnecting. I showed up, looked at the setup, and spotted the problem in 30 seconds. Paid professional install. Done wrong."
My aunt and uncle had been struggling with spotty Wi-Fi throughout their house. Devices dropping randomly, dead zones in certain rooms — the usual frustrations. They did what most people do: called the professionals. Geek Squad came out, spent two hours, charged $149.99, and installed a brand new Eero mesh Wi-Fi system.
A day or two later, my aunt called me. Her devices kept randomly disconnecting. Could I take a look? I showed up, looked at how the system was wired, and knew immediately what was wrong.
Here's what the tech had done:
At first glance, this might look reasonable. But it's fundamentally broken — and here's why.
The Eero mesh system is itself a router. It's designed to connect directly to your modem and take over all routing duties for your home network. When you put it downstream from an existing router, you now have two routers on the same network — both trying to do the same job at the same time.
The technical term for this situation is double NAT — Network Address Translation happening twice on the same connection.
Here's what's actually happening inside your network when this occurs:
76.123.45.67192.168.1.x192.168.1.5), and then creates its own private network — assigning another layer of IPs like 192.168.4.x to all your devicesNow every device on your network is sitting behind two layers of NAT. Your laptop at 192.168.4.12 has to travel through the Eero, then through your original router, then out to the internet. Data has to make that return trip in reverse — twice.
My aunt and uncle had been living with all of these symptoms — they just thought their house had "bad Wi-Fi" and that was normal. It wasn't. It was a setup problem that was entirely fixable.
On top of the double NAT issue, the tech had placed one of the Eero nodes right next to a window on an exterior wall.
This might seem harmless — after all, isn't more coverage better? But here's the reality: Wi-Fi signals don't stop at your walls. When you put a mesh node flush against an exterior window, a significant portion of that signal broadcasts outside your house — into your yard, your neighbor's yard, the street. Coverage that should be blanketing your back bedroom is instead reaching cars parked outside.
If you're in this situation right now, there are two ways to resolve it:
Unplug the Ethernet cable from your existing router and plug it directly into your Eero gateway. Power everything off, then back on in order: modem first, wait 60 seconds, then Eero gateway. Your old router is now out of the picture entirely. The Eero handles everything.
If your ISP requires you to use their gateway device (common with fiber and some cable providers), you may not be able to remove it entirely. In that case, log into your ISP gateway's admin panel and enable bridge mode — this tells it to stop acting as a router and just pass the connection through. Some ISP gateways call this "IP Passthrough" or "DMZ." Once in bridge mode, the Eero becomes the only router on your network and double NAT disappears.
Note: bridge mode settings vary by ISP and device model. If you're not sure how to access your gateway admin panel, this is exactly the kind of thing a local tech can walk you through in 15 minutes.
Here's what bothered me most about the whole situation: my aunt and uncle had no way to know any of this was wrong. They trusted the professional. They paid for professional service. And they got something that looked like a completed job but was fundamentally misconfigured.
This isn't a knock on every tech out there — there are plenty of excellent ones. But the big box model — where a tech is scheduled, dispatched, has 90 minutes on the clock, and moves on to the next job — doesn't create the right incentives for getting things truly right. It creates incentives for getting things done and moving on.
The people who suffer are homeowners who don't know what "double NAT" means and have no way to verify the work was done correctly. They just know their Wi-Fi is still acting weird.
That afternoon at my aunt and uncle's house — diagnosing in 30 seconds what $149.99 and two hours hadn't caught — was the moment I decided to build something different.
SageTech is a platform for verified, background-checked local technicians who care about doing the job right. Not techs dispatched from a regional call center who've never been to your neighborhood. Local people who know what they're doing, show up when you need them, and don't leave until the problem is actually solved.
We're launching May 1st, starting in Winston-Salem, NC — and expanding nationwide from there.
If you're not sure — or if you're experiencing the symptoms of double NAT — a SageTech tech can be at your door to diagnose and fix it. No appointment windows. No call centers.
Join the Waitlist →