As i was reviewing a conversation today, I saw a comment that indicated to seperate the bands of the persons wifi. I know this gets recommended allot and I have honestly never really had a issue that needs it. I have been using wifi pretty much since it became a consumer product with the first Linksys wifi router that supports 802.11b.
I have owned a slew of routers from a few different brands and tough there was a time when i did run seperate SSID's, I also have not for some time now. Probably the last time i ran sepereate bands was with my WNDR3700 Netgear router. It was a beast for it's time many years ago.
About 10 years ago i got Google Wifi and have run the bands combined into a single SSID ever sense. I can't recall ever having a issue that requried sepereate SSID's for a device connectivity problem. It just worked I have sense upgraded to Unifi and now run 3 bands all with the same SSID. I do have a new SSID for MLO supported devices though but that is about the wifi features and not just the band. It isn't like i i don't run IOT devices on this gear. One of the main drivers of moving to Unifi was the age of the Google Wifi gear and the fact it was Wave 1 AC gear so it didn't support many devices. I have a ton of Govee, and other wifi based stuff.
That said i have learned a lot from the Unifi forums and such about optimizations to ensure wifi runs well. An example is to reduce the transmit power of the 2.4 ghz band to ensure devices are more inclined to move between bands and AP's instead of getting stuck.
So i guess the question is do the issues that existed 10+ years ago still exist that encourage the seperate band setup. Or have we been conditioned a bit to think it is needed? Am i the only one that really runs a single SSID without issues?
Wifi has come a long way from the days of the WNDR3700 and such, and it much smarter about how it handles connections. Right now my suspicion is most of the time the real culprit is a feature on the router that needs to be adjusted and not really a band issue issue.
Google WiFi was probably the first time that I combined the bands into a single SSID. And that was about 10 years ago. I've kept them combined ever since. I cannot recall this causing any issues. I am really happy with my Unifi setup now, with the exception that it keeps hurting my wallet.
Prior to that I had Netgear routers (WNDR3300) running dd-wrt that I meshed using whatever protocol was available within dd-wrt. I recall having separate SSIDs then.
I have a Unifi network w/ 3 APs. My IoT network is 2.4Ghz only for things like ESP32s, Ecobees, Emporia Vue, Govee, etc. Most of those say that they either require a 2.4Ghz band only or perform better that way. Then I have a dual-band IoT for Roku TV, tablets, and Amazon Echo devices that can use the 5Ghz. I can't remember now but I have definitely had some devices that absolutely would not join a dual-band connection.
That is where i you loose me. I have a bunch of Govee stuff, in the magnitude of 40+. My Air Gradient Air quality sensors are based on ESP32's. I also have a Ecobeee and wiz bulbs. All of those devices work fine with a SSID that has all 3 bands. Now i don't enable certain advanced features and reserve those for my SSID that supports MLO. I have 3 U7 Pro In-wall AP's and a U7 Lite, as well as i have lowered the TX power of the 2.4 band to 6
Some, but not all. I have been on both sides of that. The reason I actually got the Google Wifi was because my current ISP droped off a Netgrear router with custom firmware on it. There was a big vulnerability found in it and i asked the about updating it and they bascially told me they would update it with no way to verify, and it was a big trust us bro moment. I went out and got Google Wifi that afternoon.
I also work for a ISP in a way. I know they are very proud of there Wifi 7 gear they are providing now. It looks pretty good though hard to tell since i can't get it. Years ago when i worked in FL i started using their routers instead of of the WNDR3700 becuase they had supprising gotten allot better comparitavely over the time i had it. I was also doing allot of beta testing of the wifi product at that time to so i was getting the best items that company had to offer.
That said i can certainly see how if a ISP is giving out bargin bin routers they are trying to control seperate SSID's could be needed.
I can connect to my 2.4Ghz band on my phone out in the yard, where the range is more limited for 5Ghz. How do phones handle that if you combine them? I like the ability to switch to 2.4Ghz when I need the range.
It's not that difficult. UniFi, and others, allows you to create WiFi networks and set them to use a single WiFi band or multiple. So what @stephen_nutt is referring to, is that one of his IoT WiFi networks is configured to only use the 2.4Ghz band of his access points.
That being said, just because he chose to configure his IoT WiFi network this way, doesn't mean you have to as well. How you configure things depends on your particular device needs, etc.
I run a full UniFi setup as well. I run several different WiFi networks, including one for IoT. I do, however, run both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz on said IoT network. My mix of IoT devices connect to both bands and perform without issue. I do run a separate 2.4Ghz WiFi network for my UniFi doorbell. The doorbell can handle 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, but I chose to limit its connection to 2.4Ghz because I get a more stable and better performing connection that way.
I am in that group that up until a year ago used my ISP provided modem/router. It was a basic setup. I could not connect via WiFi to my Aqara M2 hub because it had both bands together.
I have since put in a full UniFi setup. I still run both bands together but due to the optimizations inside the UniFi network I no longer have that issue. No issue with Aqara, Govee, etc. I am assuming it has to do with band steering and such.
I believe it totally depends on the system you are running and how it handles devices on if you need to split the bands on 2 different SSIDs.
I follow Apple’s recommendations on this. I do IT for a living, when i come home, i want my IT to just work. I dont mess with wifi 7 at all becasue it’s not fully cooked yet and to use the runny mess that does work i’d have to deviate from Apple’s recommendations. K.I.S.S
Same...IIRC the offending devices were a controller for my smoker, and I can't remember the other (few) devices that just refused to connect w/out using a 2.4 band only. This is on my Unifi setup (UCG-Max w/U6-LR & Nano-HD). Maybe the mediatek APs are not as friendly to 2.4 only devices? My 2.4 network is set to moderate power.
It isn't a difficultly thing that lost me. It was the list of devices mentioned as needing to be on a 2
4ghz only ssid. All of those devices mentioned work fine connected to a SSID that includes the 5 ghz band. It kind of speaks to the heart of my question. How much of the concern is real vs percieved.
I can also see valid reasons to run seperate SSID's that dont involve managing the band being used. Security is certainly one of those potential use cases.
If my statement came across as being controlling like something was being done wrong that wasn't my intention
I actually run moat of my wifi on a untrusted vlan
I set it up that way a years ago because of some problem devices and have kept going down that path. I recently added the dual band IoT because I have some devices that I would prefer use 5 Ghz if available. All of my Govee devices are outside so they'd probably be using 2.4 GHz anyway. Both the 2.4 Ghz and dual-band IoT SSID connect to same IoT VLAN.
I keep my SSID's seperate because I have a couple of iot devices that don't play well (they're older) with a combined SSID. So branched off 2.4 to it's own.
This is just not 100% true. I have several devices that absolutely WILL NOT work on a mixed band SSID. The most recent one is a 3D Printer (less than a year old). My Ecowitt gateway would not connect until I put both my phone and the gateway on an exclusive 2.4 network. Many other devices may sorta work on a mixed network. For instance, my Samsung R1 Speakers supposedly support both. However, in practice, when connected to a 5 ghz SSID, or a mixed SSID, they had frequent dropouts. The same thing happens on my Nest Cameras. As long as they are on a dedicated 2.4 ghz SSID, no dropouts. If I put them on 5 or mixed, several dropouts per day. This is on several different wifi brands (Primarily ASUS and TP Link over the last ten years).
So, I still run a 2.4 for my IOT only, and my non IOT devices get the 5 ghz band (and now I have even another band for my Wifi 7 capable devices).
Nowadays, many IoT devices have zero issues running g on a dual band WiFi network. However, there are still many that don’t. Ubiquiti has actually added some features within the Network app running on their routers, etc. to improve connectivity for IoT devices. In fact, there is a setting, that when toggled, specifically sets a WiFi network to the 2.4Ghz band to accommodate IoT devices with poor/limited connectivity.
In no way did your statement come off in a negative way. My apologies if my response seemed to indicate otherwise. I was simply doing my best to provide some reasoning behind why some of us setup our networks the way we do.
