MR60 Separating 2.4Ghz and 5.Ghz

Hey all, Ryan here - My background is networking (physical and wireless) and software development. I recently upgraded my shaw router to an xb7 (returning my xb6) and the performance was poor. I picked up the MR60 w/ 2 satellites to get better coverage in my home (1600 sqft).

After I setup the MR60 w/ 2 satellites I was very frustrated that I couldn't control which band (2.4Ghz or 5Ghz) my device was on. After spending a bunch of time I've figured this all out. In short, you need to manually flash your firmware to get the ability to split your SSIDs by band. There's extra confusion in this comment thread because at one point you couldn't split the SSIDs with any firmware versions, but now you can. I can confirm with 100% that you can split the bands if you upgrade your firmware to version '1.1.6.124' as of August 28, 2022.

By default the router I purchased came with the firmware version '1.0.6.102'. This version doesn't include the ability to split SSIDs. You can confirm your version by going to the web portal (http://routerlogin.net), click the Advanced tab -> click the Administration area -> click Router Update and look under the column heading "Current Firmware Version". You'll see your current version. The super confusing part is that you'll also see that it says 'No new firmware available'. 

What you need to do is go to this URL: https://kb.netgear.com/000064880/MR60-MS60-Firmware-Version-1-1-6-124 and follow the instructions and manually update your firmware to version '1.1.6.124'. Make sure to update your satellites first. After you do that you'll be able to split your SSIDs by going to the web portal (http://routerlogin.net), click the Advanced tab -> click the Administration area -> click Advanced Setup -> click Customize WiFi Setup and click "Customize 2.4 GHz WiFi Network" and "Customize 5.0 GHz WiFi Network".

If you try and name either of the customized bands the same as your existing wifi name you'll get an error. What I had to do was go to the Basic tab -> Wireless and change the wifi name.

At the end of the day your wifi will look like this (assuming you want your wifi to start with SuperWifi ‌😀‌ 😞

• SuperWifiAll - This will support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz - Wireless tab
• SuperWifi24 - This will support 2.4GHz - Advanced Setup - Customize WiFi Setup
• SuperWifi5 - This will support 5GHz- Advanced Setup - Customize WiFi Setup

I don't know if this will solve the printer issue that people were having (I don't know if it shares the same network behind the scenes, I'd have to do more digging to see if they're on the same network to communicate with each other) but this solved my problems of:

• Older IOT devices on 2.4GHz not connecting to "SuperWifiAll", the old tech doesn't let them connect to the right band. They all connect through "SuperWifi24" now.
• New devices sometimes using 2.4GHz instead of 5Ghz. This causes really slow downloads. I can connect them all to "SuperWifi5" to make sure they're on 5Ghz.
  • My PS5 allows me to pick the 5GHz band through the interface but my Nintendo Switch seems to always default to the 2.4GHz network (using "SuperWifiAll") and you can't override it. After some troubleshooting the Nintendo Switch seems to pick based on signal strength or something but now I just put it on "SuperWifi5".

I found that the performance of the new firmware (124) is much better overall (connectivity and speed). I also saw that the recent firmware added support for 'MU-MIMO' which is some new fancy WiFi6 functionality... But I need more wifi 6 devices before I turn it on and try it out! Let me know if this helps or if you need help troubleshooting.