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Forum Discussion
Disable 5GHz
My printer only supports 2.4 GHz WiFi, but my Orbi system keeps steering it to 5 GHz. This causes the printer to go offline, fail to wake, and requires the Canon app to reconnect. My Orbi model does...
Sad that Canon's program failed to lock the printer to 2.4G. But, good news that an inexpensive WiFi extender did the job. "Problem Solved"
Sad that Canon's program failed to lock the printer to 2.4G.
Why should it? These printers come just with poor to avarage wireless client. And the big majority of dual-band WiFi clients, being in IoT, mobile phones, tablets, notebooks, ... the user has no such choice, never, nowhere.
Since there is no such choice, it's up to the printer manuafacturer investigating, why their printers (equipped with extremely cheap WiFi adapters) are failing badly if the customer WiFi environment is not that basic as intended in their product specs and design!
But, good news that an inexpensive WiFi extender did the job.
Yes, these (even inexpensive) extenders allow (just like consumer and business wireless access points) to define an SSID active on e.g. the 2.4 GHz band only. Thats why some senior community members here (including yourself in a differet fur) have suggested that approach.
The extender only broadcasts 2.4GHz - which the Canon printer prefers.
So you know wehre you should complain to....
Now, if I tell you that the Netgear EAX80 extender (a Broadcom platform, with BCM43684 WiFi ...) does, when operating on all bands, and in mesh mode, fail miserably in a typyical environment with business class APs (Qualcomm platfrom, Netgear WBE71x and WBE75x, almost the de-facto standard with all vendors), what does that mean to us? The IT worls is - when it comes to WiFi - is not perfect.
In my opinion the problem is shared between Netgear and Canon. Netgear because they offer no means to control band steering. Canon because they should not even be configuring their printers to work with 5GHz. But since Canon is allowing users to use 5GHz - they should offer the ability to toggle it on or off. I spent 2 hours with Canon Tech Support not solving my problem. It wasn't until I dug deeper on my own to discover that 5GHz is crap. Canon sent me a survey to measure the results of my satisfaction with their tech support. I happily responded and I have not heard back.
Something that may help in resolving the printers wifi issues with MESH systems, try a USB to ethernet print server. Maybe getting the printer on a Ethernet connection and then point your printer driver to this IP address instead of using WiFi may be one solution.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-100Mbps-Ethernet-Network-Server/dp/B016A4MSA4?th=1
Orbi only offers the platform for devices to connect too, dual band or signal band. It's always been up to the devices to pick the signal to connect too.
Good Luck.
As mentioned..... Problem was solved using an internet extender limiting the band to 2.4GHz. I disagree with your 2nd paragraph. As a user, I I can select what band to use. However, when devices have no human interaction to select the band, Orbi determines the signal band the device will use. For this reaspon I will continue to blame both Net Gear and Canon for creating this problem.
Netgear because they offer no means to control band steering.
There is not a single Netgear documentation explicitly or implicitly stating, that any Orbi systems are doing active band steering. A little bit different on the business grade Netgear wireless access points like the WAX6xx and WBE7xx models: There is an option to enable Band Steering if it's wanted by the network admin - by default it's disabled.
But since Canon is allowing users to use 5GHz - they should offer the ability to toggle it on or off.
Why oh why please? Not a single standard wireless client implementation does - on Windows or Apple systems, and not on most Linux systems - offers -any- kind of band selection. Just some cheap wirelss extenders might do ...
This was discussed up and down back at the times when some **** had the idea, that the configuration of certain IoT using brainded App implementations falsely requiring (and testing) if the mobile device with the App is currently connected to the 2.4 GHz band.
Industry standard wirless clients supporting 2.4 and 5 GHz, and much more those supporting all three bands 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz are depending on 802.11k and 802.11v, sometimes in combination with 802.11r (allowing fast roaming), even with WPA3-Personal (-AES) and WPA3- Enterprise, using SAE (Simultaneous Authentication of Equals) and IEEE 802.1X/EAP to temporary key snooping and replay impossible.
Even without any band steering - technically band steering to the better 5 or 6 GHz bands would for a short moment deny wifi access on the 2.4 GHz band, allowing the wireless client re-associating to the assumed better performing, more reliable 5 GHz band - any wireless client (unless it's sticky) will re-associate to the 5 GHz band extreme likely. This, and onls this, is what you wrongly claim to be band steering.
It wasn't until I dug deeper on my own to discover that 5GHz is crap.
5 GHz WiFi has - for physical reasons - a shorter reach than the 2,4 GHz band.
Sure, there can be some other systems disturbing 5 GHz systems, especially those located very near to your environment. For examle yet another WiFi router, also operating on the lower channels like 36...48, where the Orbi like the RBR50 and RBS50 are operating the client-facing connections.
I have a Canon printer. When I set it up, it is linked to my Net Gear mesh - via 5GHz. I did not request 5GHz. It was assigned to 5GHz by Net Gear. I call this Band Steering. Maybe there is another name for that. But for now, I am done. My problem was solved using an extender - to prevent Orbi from assigning 5GHz to my printer.
