NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
R7000 2.4 signal and wifi speeds flaky (1.0.9.34)
Wifi became frustratingly slow again for me today. Speedtest registerd me around 15Mps rather than my normal 150+. I rebooted the router, but this did not clear the problem. I rebooted it again w/...
Final thank you to those contirbuting to my understanding.
The NG implementation of band steering, which doesn't support roaming between bands, really won't work for my home unless I disabled 5G altogether; we have some areas not covered by 5G, so every device would need to be on 2.4 to support occasional use from worst case location.
So either I invest in mesh replacement or leave smart connect off. The latter approach has been working well on 1.0.9.28 for almost a month now without any problems and without any router reboots.
I'm going to move forward with single SSID and disabled smart connect for now. It has been working well for my household since I bought the router, which is not surprising. Netflix HD streaming, for example, needs some 5Mbps, which is an easy reach for us if all 5 members of my household were sharig a single band. We occasionally host events where some 40 people are all using our wifi at the same time, but in this case none of their devices are driving high bandwidth applications, and noone has issues.
In conclusion, while my house is a candidate for mesh, the dual band r7000 is more than adequate for us provided that we levarage roaming between bands. I plan to use separate SSIDs if or when we actually run into a bandwidth challenge.
Thanks again.
You might think reading some links makes things clear to you, but they are either for 'true' smart connect or theoretical.
NG's implementation do NOT do load balancing after device connection. Once on an SSID you stay on it.
Your first link is for Band Steering which although similar is not completely the same.
2nd link appears to be for Cisco AP's... and is a different implemtation.
Last link, not even about the same thing. It is using the SAME SSID as the other router(s) are using the same as the original. So let's say you are at an airport and you connect at one end and walk to the gates you stay connected. Your device picks the strongest signal it can find and automatically picks the closest one up. Same as Range Extenders in the home.
What we are discussing is using the SAME ID for BOTH (or more) SSID's on your router. You said you set the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz SSID to be the same. I asked then HOW COULD ANY DEVICE know which band it was connecting to? Either it would only see ONE SSID, the strongest one probably, or BOTH but not know which one to use? That IS the problem! Now if a device that can only use the 2.4Ghz band this will not be a problem as it can't see the 5Ghz band. It is the Dual band device that will have a problem.
Smart Connect FORCES the 2 bands on the R7000 to be the same... and it determines where who goes, and in some cases it will put a Dual band device on the 2.4Ghz band. There is NO guarantee with NG's implementation which band a Dual Band device will go on either, but the single band 2.4Ghz device will always connect to the 2.4Ghz band.
Just like your example of losing the 5Ghz signal, even with Smart Connect the same thing will happen as once a device loses connection it retries. 5Ghz doesn't go as far at the 2.4Ghz but as you get further away from the router the 5Ghz signal does stay stronger until it is gone.
Now if your device doesn't 'know' the 2.4Ghz SSID because you never joined it or 'forgot' that connection in both cases you'll be prompted for credentials. If you have Smart Connect enabled and your dual band device was never on the 2.4Ghz SSID (or was told to forget it) you will also be prompted (but it will be saved for future use).
You seem to be questioning how things work and trying to justify using the same SSID on both radio's? I can't tell how you could tell one from the other to even suggest you know where everything 'will' connect (without looking at the router to tell).
Device connection problems, who knows why?
You have 2 choices... and in the case of the R7000, I think only if you know ALL your h/w should you be using 2 SSID's, otherwise, Smart Connect should work for you. That said, you have to realize some device that you want greater throughput on might wind up on the 2.4Ghz band and be limited. Even the 5Ghz band can be limited by an N device on as well as an AC device. I never used Smart Connect as I wanted ALL my 2.4Ghz devices on that SSID, and ALL the Dual Band devices on the 5Ghz SSID.
By the way, NG uses Broadcom's XStream architecture, and implemented only what it wanted to, at least on the R8000, see https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32474-netgear-r8000-nighthawk-x6-first-look?start=3, and from it:
=============
Instead, I chose to explore NETGEAR's SmartConnect feature.
To recap, SmartConnect is NETGEAR's implementation of Broadcom's XStream architecture. SmartConnect uses two 5 GHz radios and assigns client to each one when they connect. The assignment is static until the connection between router and client is broken.
Dynamic client assigment is part of the XStream architecture, but vendors can choose which XStream features they use. NETGEAR told me they disabled dynamic client assignment because some devices "do not make a graceful switch".
==============
Obviously the R7000's is over both bands... but only NG knows what was implemented, or not. I'd be surprised is it has the Dynamic assignment. This is a the SSID load leveling feature making sure each SSID has about the same device load/use.
Feel free to do what you please.
Final thank you to those contirbuting to my understanding.
The NG implementation of band steering, which doesn't support roaming between bands, really won't work for my home unless I disabled 5G altogether; we have some areas not covered by 5G, so every device would need to be on 2.4 to support occasional use from worst case location.
So either I invest in mesh replacement or leave smart connect off. The latter approach has been working well on 1.0.9.28 for almost a month now without any problems and without any router reboots.
I'm going to move forward with single SSID and disabled smart connect for now. It has been working well for my household since I bought the router, which is not surprising. Netflix HD streaming, for example, needs some 5Mbps, which is an easy reach for us if all 5 members of my household were sharig a single band. We occasionally host events where some 40 people are all using our wifi at the same time, but in this case none of their devices are driving high bandwidth applications, and noone has issues.
In conclusion, while my house is a candidate for mesh, the dual band r7000 is more than adequate for us provided that we levarage roaming between bands. I plan to use separate SSIDs if or when we actually run into a bandwidth challenge.
Thanks again.