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I have an R7000P running in AP mode and MU-MIMO turned on. This AP is 10 feet and no walls from my laptop. When I boot my laptop, it tries to connect to my R7000 running in AP mode. The R7000 is 40 feet and several walls away from my laptop and that connection is unusable. The SSID is the same for both APs. The laptop doesn’t ever automatically connect to the R7000P. If I disconnect and reconnect, all is fine. If I turn MU-MIMO off on the R7000P, all is fine.
Here’s more configuration info.
I’m using the 5Ghz channel.
The firmware version on the R7000P is 3.1.64_10.1.36.
My laptop is a Dell XPS 13 running Windows 10.
My laptop has a Dell Wireless 1820A WiFi card. This card doesn’t support MU-MIMO, but I don’t need it to.
WiFi Analyzer reports the R7000P channel to be 161 with a signal strength as -44 dbm.
WiFi Analyzer reports the R7000 channel to be 48 with a signal strength as -90 dbm.
Since its a Broadcom chipset based router I would disable MU-MIMO, on Broadcom based AC routers regardless of brand it can cause performance issues as Broadcom didnt do a great job of implementing MU. Secondly, MU on a 3 antenna router is pretty pointless as most clients have 2 antennas and for proper MU functionality to have 2 dual antenna MU devices reciving at the same time you need 4 antenna routers. The only AC router on the market that does well with MU is the R7800 (4 antennas), it uses a Qualcomm chipset, and its Synology equivalent the RT2600ac as well which uses the same hardware.
Not trying to be an a**hole but this isn't a router issue. The laptop is choosing which ssid to connect to. This should be something for a windows forum, dell forum, or even broadcomm as they manufacture the chipset for the dell 1820a. Best option? make sure you ssid's are seperated out and you can manually choose which to connect to.
I hear what you're saying. But here is why I think that isn't the right answer.
The reason for having the SSIDs the same is so that my devices seamlessly switch between Access Points as I walk between the rooms holding the device. A device switches between APs with the same SSID more quickly and seamlessly that it does between APs with different APs. It doesn't make sense to make all of my clients deal with switching between SSIDs because one router doesn't play well with all devices.
The router introduced a new feature, MU-MIMO, that made it incompatible with existing devices and the router still claims to be 802.11n compatible.
I understand the urge to jump on a workaround. But I don't think that is the right solution either for me specifically nor for Netgear in general.
Model: R7000P|Nighthawk AC2300 Smart WiFi Dual Band Gigabit Router
Netgear does have something that does that. It's called Orbi. Orbi switches devices between satellites and router and between bands. Orbi controls it versus the device controlling what to connects to. In an ideal world, you'd be correct in that'd be the best solution, in practice it sucks because it puts the wireless device makers in control. Rarely does that end up being to our benefit. Sorry this is short, on my phone.
If you do a little googling, unless you're running a network with a controller that moves the devices around, the device itself is responsible for moving between AP's. its own drivers/software/firmware is whats in controll of it. Not the router.
Since its a Broadcom chipset based router I would disable MU-MIMO, on Broadcom based AC routers regardless of brand it can cause performance issues as Broadcom didnt do a great job of implementing MU. Secondly, MU on a 3 antenna router is pretty pointless as most clients have 2 antennas and for proper MU functionality to have 2 dual antenna MU devices reciving at the same time you need 4 antenna routers. The only AC router on the market that does well with MU is the R7800 (4 antennas), it uses a Qualcomm chipset, and its Synology equivalent the RT2600ac as well which uses the same hardware.
