How to Set Up Smart Home Devices With 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi (2022) Leave a comment
Whether you might be welcoming a new robot vacuum into your property, organising smart lighting, or including one of many newest smart speakers, there’s an opportunity you might run into bother getting your smart home devices connected to your Wi-Fi community. There are a number of attainable causes, however the commonest is that many sensible residence units can solely join to the 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi band.
Simply put, most routers have a single community title or SSID (Service Set Identifier), which is what your units join to. The router decides on the frequency band—selecting between 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz—based mostly on the system and sign energy, which is known as band steering. The 2.4-GHz band has higher vary and penetration by way of obstacles like partitions, however the 5-GHz band is quicker.
The downside? If you utilize your cellphone to arrange the sensible residence system by way of its respective app, you would possibly discover that the system needs to be a part of the 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi band, however your cellphone is on the 5-GHz band. This disconnect can lead to a irritating loop the place your new system hangs on the connecting step earlier than ultimately reporting that it can not be a part of your community. Thankfully, there are three essential methods to remedy this problem.
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Split the Bands
Many routers and mesh systems permit you to arrange separate SSIDs for 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz networks by way of an app or net interface—you will want to seek the advice of the settings menu to determine how.
By splitting the bands, your 2.4-GHz community and your 5-GHz community can have distinct names and passwords. This makes your property community barely extra complicated, nevertheless it does permit you to resolve which band to be a part of. For units that function on 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz, like your cellphone and laptop computer, you will need to be a part of each and let your system select (it ought to default to the quickest out there sturdy sign). It’s a good suggestion to append the title of the 5-GHz band, so which is which. (For instance, title them “mynetwork” and “mynetwork_5GHz.”)
Smart residence units which have this connectivity downside throughout setup can join simply high-quality after you full the cut up, so you possibly can change again to a single SSID after your new system is efficiently related (simply be certain the 2.4-GHz band community has the title and password you plan to use as your essential community).
Go the Distance
An easier methodology is to transfer far sufficient away out of your router (be certain to unplug the closest mesh node); this would possibly power your cellphone to join to the 2.4-GHz band. Since this band has a greater vary, your smartphone will ultimately change from 5 GHz with sufficient distance. This would possibly imply carrying your robotic vacuum out into the yard, which isn’t best.
Create a Guest Network
You could want not to have two separate networks or discover that your mesh router doesn’t help band splitting. For instance, Google’s Nest WiFi doesn’t permit you to cut up bands. You can usually get round this problem by making a visitor community, which solely operates on the 2.4-GHz band. (By default, most visitor networks run on this band.)
Guest networks are designed to allow guests to your property to join to your Wi-Fi community with out giving them entry to the identical community as all of your units. Both networks have entry to the web, however solely units on the identical community can speak straight to one another, which may be useful for sharing information or printing. Visitors on visitor networks can’t infect any of your devices with malware (not that they might do that intentionally, however they could be unwittingly contaminated).
