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Forum Discussion
ORBI RBRE960 Band steering
I recently purchased a Galaxy Tab S9 and it has been having issues staying connected to the 6Ghz Wifi 6e band on my Orbi router. It will only stay connected to the 5Ghz Wifi 6 band. I contacted Samsu...
GuyInTheDesert wrote:
I recently purchased a Galaxy Tab S9 and it has been having issues staying connected to the 6Ghz Wifi 6e band on my Orbi router. It will only stay connected to the 5Ghz Wifi 6 band.able this, how would I go about doing that? Or is anyone else experiencing this same issue with their Galaxy tab?
Does this problem happen
- When the tablet remains stationary (in one place), or
- When the tablet roams from one Orbi unit to another?
Page 57 of the user manual says that band steering cannot be disabled on the primary WiFi.
https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/RBKE963/RBRE960_RBSE960_UM_EN.pdf
This is by design. When a device wanders so far from a 6Ghz signal that it is no longer reliable, the device will switch to the 5G channel. Likewise, when it wanders so far from a 5G signal that it is no longer usable, it switches automatically to the primary network at 2.4G. Better to have a slower connection than no connection at all.
Page 57 mentions that a separate WiFi SSID can be created that only supports 6E. My assumption is that a device that is connected to this SSID may struggle when roaming from one Orbi to another.
Would be an interesting experiment.
- Create the separate 6E SSID.
- Connect the tablet to it.
- Walk around and "see what happens".
To answer your questions: The tablet does this in both situations and I only have one Orbi unit so no satellites. I can certainly try to set up a separate 6E SSID to see what happens. What's strange is that I also own a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and that has no issues at all staying connected to the 6E nor does my laptop.
Oh, my. With only a single WiFi access point, I can imagine a device getting "steered" to the 5G channel if it wanders away and the 6Ghz signal become unusable. Just sitting in one place and the band getting changed just makes no sense.
Band steering is a very confusing topic. Internet searches turn up all sorts of material explaining how it may work.
Back in 2016, this article claimed there were no standards for band steering:
https://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless-infrastructure/4-wifi-band-steering-myths
(Today being 2023, one wonders, "are there standards now?" I certainly cannot find any.)
From what I can find on the internet, it appears that band steering might be a feature on WiFi systems that:
- Collects probe requests from WiFi devices.
- Determines that the same WiFi MAC address has sent probes on both 2.4G and 5G channels
- Responds with a probe response only on the 5G channel, so that
- The device never hears back on the 2.4G channel and thus asks to associate with the 5G channel.
This, however, does not match my own observations. (i.e. it is more complicated that that) For example, when I pull into the driveway, my phone very quickly connects to the Orbi at 2.4G (because the 5G signal is far too weak for a good connection). After I walk inside, the Orbi Attached Devices display will continue to report that the phone is connected at 2.4G, but after a while (TaDa!) The phone is connected at 5G. How did it switch???
My guess is you may have more luck getting answers from Samsung than from Netgear.
I think at this point I will have to contact Samsung again and just tell them that I can't do band steering and see what they say. Not sure if a replacement tablet will fix this problem or not.