Pros and cons of combining 2.4 and 5 Ghz wifi

[madfusker]

In firmware you can combine these into one and show as only one access point SSID. Can anyone explain what this actually does, and if I should use it?

 

[JDB]

For clients that support both they will roam between the bands based on best performance based on signal strength.

As 2.4Ghz is much longer range it’s nice to be able to walk to the end of the garden with your phone and have seamless Wi-fi as it will switch from 5Ghz for example.
With different SSID’s for each band the change would not be seamless (so a Wificall you were on would be dropped in the transition for example).

That’s the only real advantage.

Conversely you are putting band choice in the hands of the router/clients. If they make a choice you don’t like (2.4Ghz despite 5Ghz being available with good strength or hanging onto 5Ghz too long despite poor long range performance) you are stuck with it. With separate SSID you can force a client to a band you prefer (as above a client will still auto switch but it’s 100% client choice and not assisted/suggested by the router, you often find a client will hang onto a band much longer when it would be better switching because of this).

This can be effectively managed using the Smart Connect rules though and tuning the thresholds to your preferences and environment - in 3 years I’ve had no issues since having single SSID for all bands and setting Smart Connect up properly (prior to fiddling with the SC settings it wasn’t perfect).

I make a lot of Wificalls as I have no landline and no GSM reception so seamless roaming is imperative for me.


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[madfusker]

Great info, and thanks! Would you be willing to share your SC settings? It would be nice to see what an aggressive setting looks like compared to the defaults.

 

[JDB]

I have the RT-AC5300 so my band steering will be very different from a dual band router and not much help to you (assuming you don’t have a tri-band router?).

Post a screenshot of your current and I’ll happily make some suggested changes though. Took me a long time to understand the options and there isn’t much good/clear/comprehensive info out there about what they do!


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[#TY]

I have the RT-AC5300 so my band steering will be very different from a dual band router and not much help to you (assuming you don’t have a tri-band router?).

Post a screenshot of your current and I’ll happily make some suggested changes though. Took me a long time to understand the options and there isn’t much good/clear/comprehensive info out there about what they do!

I currently use the RT-AC5300 as well. I'd love to know how to tweak the SC settings as well. Up until now, I've kept Smart Connect off because I'm not knowledgeable enough to know where/how to start tinkering. However, with a proven baseline, I'd be happy to learn and start testing.

 

[Val D.]

In firmware you can combine these into one and show as only one access point SSID

Yes, and this is the only convenience. I personally never had good experience with Smart Connect on RT-AC86U. In my understanding, it's designed to be more like Easy Connect than Best Connect. For a user who has no idea what channel and frequency means it's perfectly fine. It constantly chooses bad 2.4GHz channels though, clients jump around for no reason, AC capable clients get locked to N on 2.4GHz, etc. I have played a lot with the settings, but with no good results. It makes more sense on a tri-band router to balance the load between the two 5GHz networks, but I would manually lock all older N 5GHz devices on one band and all newer AC devices on the other. This way slower N devices will affect less the performance of faster AC devices.

 

[JDB]

Here’s my tri band settings which work well for me


https://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/...eering-which-setup-is-best.44332/#post-377657


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