Separate SSID for 2.4ghz and 5ghz or same?

[Signet]

Hi Guys

Looking for some advice regarding setting up my home network.

Is it better to have the same SSID for both 2.4ghz and 5ghz or should I keep them separate?

Some background to my situation.

1. For home use. Fibre uncapped 200mb line (up and down)
2. 270m2 house with 5 residents
3. 2 x Smart TV for watching Netflix, Showmax, etc is using a wired connection
4. Media PC using wired connection

Only devices using wifi are as follows
1. 4 x cellphones
2. 2 x iPads
3. 2 x TV with Google Chromecast (on occasion)
4. Most 2 x laptops at same time. Only 1 laptop is 5ghz capable.

Router is a TP Link Archer C7.

Thank you


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[CV Omega]

Hey Bud

I would say use the same SSID. Most of the time if your devices/router is smart enough it will automatically choose the best frequency (2.4 or 5GHz) depending and they can also negotiate and swop as needed. Then there is no extra work from your side so put some on 5GHz if they are capable and the rest on 2.4GHz. The devices will just choose the best one

Small note if you have intermittent issues where they randomly drop connection, it might mean the router/device is not smart enough to properly choose the best frequency and drop connection if it swops between the 2. Then it might be better to have separate SSID's

I had a quick look at your router and you just need to enable the "Smart connect" feature on your router: What is the TP-Link Smart Connect feature and how to enable it? | TP-Link

Hope this helps

 

[bythecantloads]

I have previously made the mistake of naming the 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz the same. What a nightmare this was. Okay fair enough this was a couple of years back, but still. I keep the seperate now. Your wireless device will most probably default to the strongest signal which is your 2.4Ghz.

If you really need the speeds of 5Ghz then only connect to that frequency. The range is much less though.

 

[Crumbl0x]

Might just be my old-ish devices but I can't run both with the same SSID, it constantly reconnects between them so I opted for 2.4Ghz purely for range since I have nothing that would benefit from 5Ghz' speeds anyways, perhaps newer devices on all fronts do this picking flawlessly now.

 

[abd]

I run the same ssid on both frequencies, on unifi. Done the same on Asus AI mesh. Both functioned perfectly without any issues

 

[Signet]

Hi All

Thanks for all the feedback
In the past with older devices and router I also had some issues which led me to creating separate SSIDs.
I'm hopeful new technology has improved. I will try them on same SSID - thanks for the tip on "Smart Connect" @CV Omega - Will def try this.

 

[NemoXX7]

In my case i have made them separate due to devices having issues switching over wifi, and i have instead opted for the 2.4G band to be my guest network (as opposed to opening a third SSID as a guest network) and set up a speed limiter lol so i can enjoy the speeds over the 5G band

 

[Giovanni]

I have Ubiquiti APs, so not sure how applicable this is to the Archer C7, but I have both combined into one SSID which serves the newer devices which are smart enough to choose 2.4ghz when signal strength is an issue and 5ghz when in range. There are two devices in the household which freak out with this combined AP (a older dell laptop and a older smart TV) - for those two I created another, separate SSID which only runs on the 2.4ghz band.