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Wifi Band Switching Constantly

DCote1
Beginner
4,065 Views

Greetings,

I have an HP Spectre x360 15t with Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 and I seem to have trouble maintaining a stable wireless connection when I move further away from the wifi router. I use a tri-band Linksys router supporting 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands. The problem occurs when I move from the living room, which is close to the router and gets a strong 5Ghz signal, to my office which is further away from the router. My house is no very large but I'd guess it's about 50 feet from the office to the router. In the office, the laptop will start using a 2.4Ghz band and have a good signal. No problem. Then, for reasons I haven't determined, will switch to the 5Ghz band and the signal quality drops dramatically. After some time, it might decide to switch back again. This is causing drops, slowness, etc. and is quite frustrating. I am using the same SSID on each band and I understand the device will try to use the best connection, but it should always be using the 2.4Ghz band in my opinion and never get confused. Is there a way to ensure its using the right band without having different SSIDs?

Thank you,

Doug

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n_scott_pearson
Super User
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I have multiple routers in my home (to handle issues between multiple stories rather than distance) and initially I set them up so that the same SSIDs were used by both (though, in my case, it was one SSID for 2.4GHz and another for 5.0GHz). What I found is that this caused confusion in my portable devices (both laptop and Samsung phone) and it would stick with a connection rather than switch to a better one when I moved around. I found that reconfiguring with separate SSIDs alleviated this confusion.

I wonder if using the same SSID for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz is causing a similar confusion? I don't see any reason why you cannot switch to separate SSIDs. The laptop (and other devices) can always have entries in its wireless table for both SSIDs and then can make (hopefully) seamless switches between them based upon connection quality...

Hope this helps (even though it is just speculation),

...S

idata
Employee
1,761 Views

Hello Doug,

Your question has been moved over to our /community/tech/wireless Wireless Networking Support Community.

We understand that your computer will roam between the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands depending on your location around the house. Depending on your router model, this may be controlled automatically by the router, which may select which band a device connects to based on it's own algorithm. If this is the case, following the recommendation provided by N. Scott Pearson, to broadcast each frequency with a separate SSID, should resolve the problem.

You can also modify your https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005585/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html advanced adapter settings to lower the roaming aggressiveness, and set up a preferred band.

1. Device Manager > Network Adapters > Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 > Double click to access properties, switch to the Advanced tab.

 

2. Change your Preferred Band from "1. No Preference" to "2. Prefer 2.4 GHz Band"

 

3. Lower your Roaming Aggressiveness. Setting this to "1. Lowest" will disable automatic roaming. Alternatively, you may choose "2. Medium-low," if you'd like your adapter to automatically roam, but only when your current network has a very low connection quality.

To learn more about this issue, you may find the following links interesting:

- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005546/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html Wi-Fi Roaming Aggressiveness.

- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006020/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html Wi-Fi Client Adapter Connection and Roaming Behavior.

- /thread/117205 Roaming aggressiveness and Signal strength.

We hope this information help. Please let us know if the issue continues, or if you have any additional questions.

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
DCote1
Beginner
1,761 Views

Thanks very much for the responses. I figured there was something related to band steering in the router that was causing the issue but was hoping it could be overridden on the client. I also found references to RSSI and wondered if there was a way to control this in the client so that it would stick to 2.4. Anyway, I will experiment with setting preferred to 2.4g to see if it still uses 5g when I'm closer to the router but stay at 2.4g when I'm in the office, which would be ideal. I had already set roaming aggressiveness to the lowest setting.

Doug

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idata
Employee
1,761 Views

Hello Doug,

 

 

We're always glad to be of assistance.

 

 

If the issue continues, or you have any additional questions, just let us know.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
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