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Forum Discussion
Forcing certain devices to connect to 2.4ghz
Set up this network last night and things seem to have really improved. Some of our devices (light bulbs) require a 2.4ghz connection and it wont let connect to it because (I assume) it's preferring ...
ddublu wrote:Some of our devices (light bulbs) require a 2.4ghz connection and it wont let connect to it because (I assume) it's preferring the 5ghz connection over it.
One thing you can be certain of is the light bulbs are NOT "preferring the 5G connection". The bulbs have no 5G radio. They cannot sense or connect to anything but 2.4G WiFi. As FURRYe38 mentioned, while thousands of Internet of Things (IoT) devices connect easily, there are specific instances where the setup software was programmed ineptly and the solution is to temporarily make the 5G WiFi network "disappear", reconnect the smartphone to the Orbi at 2.4G, setup the IoT devices, then reenable the 5G WiFi and restart the smartphone a second time.
Does that really work? I thought the Orbi periodically reconfirmed the connection. (i.e. in case you moved a device). Regardless anytime you upgrade firmware/reboot you have to go through the process above again.
Yes, it works. Once the device has connected to Orbi at 2.4G, it knows the SSID and password and will connect every time. After power failures. After software updates. Always. The only issue is the dumb software which does not provide the setup information the first time.
Ragar99 wrote:
Does that really work? I thought the Orbi periodically reconfirmed the connection. (i.e. in case you moved a device). Regardless anytime you upgrade firmware/reboot you have to go through the process above again.
Dozens of satisfied customers will confirm that temporarily disabling the 5 GHz SSID allowed them to set up their IoT toys. Once that is done, the devices aren't going to mess around with something they can't see.
When you have done it, complain to the people who wrote the crummy routine for your IoT device. They really need to stagger into the era of Mesh computing.
There are still a few users who want to permanently separate SSIDs for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. They don't seem to have realised what they bought.
What is the reason to turn the 5ghz broadcast back on? Since I turned it off and got the IoT devices online, have I only been operating in 2ghz across my home?
ddublu wrote:
Since I turned it off and got the IoT devices online, have I only been operating in 2ghz across my home?
No, but you won't find the SSID if you try to connect a new device.
And once the IoT stuff is connected, it doesn't care about 5 GHz.
But it is your call.
