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RAE1973's avatar
RAE1973
Aspirant
Jan 10, 2021

Nighthawk R7000 - Missing Band

My Nighthawk has been a fabulous router ever since I purchased it several years ago. As of late however i noticed that when searching for wifi connections only my 2.4 ghz appears. The 5GHZ no longer appears when you click on the network & Internet seach icon in the lower right hand corner of my windows 10 PC. Any idea why the 5GHZ would all of a sudden disappear? I have about 10 choices for wifi connections, (all my neighbors), but my own 5GHZ is no longer listed.

4 Replies

    • RAE1973's avatar
      RAE1973
      Aspirant
      Jan 11, 2021

      Thanks, it seems that I had applied "SmartConnect" and the router searched for the best band to use all the time. Thus the 5GHZ band was not appearing in my list of wifi connections. After unchecking "SmartConnect" the 5 GHZ band now appears in my list of available wifi connections. So, now my question is it appears 9 out of 10 devices in my home connect to the 2.4 GHZ and the 5 GHZ is hardly used by any of them when I am in "SmartConnect" mode. Should I leave it in SmartConnect mode? Is tghere any reason for me to choose which band I use since the router chooses the best connection when in SmartConnect mode?

      • michaelkenward's avatar
        michaelkenward
        Guru - Experienced User
        Jan 11, 2021
        RAE1973 wrote:

        So, now my question is it appears 9 out of 10 devices in my home connect to the 2.4 GHZ and the 5 GHZ is hardly used by any of them when I am in "SmartConnect" mode.

        If a device cannot use 5 GHz wifi it will not see it and will simply connect to the 2.4 GHz source.

         

        RAE1973 wrote:

        Is tghere any reason for me to choose which band I use since the router chooses the best connection when in SmartConnect mode?

        Your call. Wifi clients are usually smart enough to go for the best signal they can use.

         

        This means that you don't have to mess around picking a wifi band.

         

        The only time when it can help to have separate SSIDs for 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz is when you are trying to set up a crummy IoT device whose makers aren't smart enough to design an installation app that falls over when trying to use a 5 GHz connection to install a device on 2.4 GHz. In those circumstances temporarily turning off the 5 GHz SSID can be a solution.