SSID - Do you use separate for both 2.4 and 5.0?

[htismaqe]

Don't clients switch to the best WiFi AP, regardless of SSID? Regardless, knowing precisely which device or frequency simplifies the inevitable debugging session.

Anyway, I am a bit confused myself that you are so surprised that other people have a different experience with the same devices. Some people prefer Coca-Cola while other prefer Pepsi. What you call a "good decision", I might call a "AAAAHHHH, WHY DID YOU DO THAT YOU POS COMPUTER!!!".

Different strokes for different folks.

Well it's not really personal preference that I'm talking about. I think we ALL prefer smooth, trouble-free operation. Some of us can get that with one configuration while others can't, and vice versa.

To take the Coke/Pepsi analogy a bit further, it's like saying we both treat our headaches with Ibuprofen - you prefer Advil brand and I prefer Walgreens store brand. Different packaging, same purpose, identical ingredients. For one of us they work and for the other they don't.

 

[Nullity]

Well it's not really personal preference that I'm talking about. I think we ALL prefer smooth, trouble-free operation. Some of us can get that with one configuration while others can't, and vice versa.

To take the Coke/Pepsi analogy a bit further, it's like saying we both treat our headaches with Ibuprofen - you prefer Advil brand and I prefer Walgreens store brand. Different packaging, same purpose, identical ingredients. For one of us they work and for the other they don't.

"Smooth and trouble-free" could be an automatic transmission, because it shifts without troubling the user, or a manual transmission, because no computer is as intelligent as a human. I think it is a question of preference; convenience vs full-control.

Minivans work fine with automatics but Formula-1 is exclusively manual. I do not mean to insinuate that your network is the minivan of WiFi networks or anything like that...

Neither is best/worst, right/wrong.

 

[sfx2000]

That's just the thing. I haven't given up any control. I want my iPhone to connect to 5Ghz when the signal is strong enough and connect to 2.4Ghz when it moves out of range of 5Ghz. And it does just that. Without me having to do anything.

I get exactly the same performance as I did having 2 separate SSIDs and my phone does the switching for me. I really don't understand the need for more control than that.

I think a lot of it goes back 5-10 years... back then, use was nomadic - e.g. move around and wake up the device (maybe a laptop), and most devices and AP's back then were single band, and most folks had a single AP...

In the here and now - we've got dual band smartphones and some of us run more than one AP, but many have dual-band AP's - and mobility now is a much more common use case - even with a single dual-band AP, hand up/down is a more common occurrence...

I'm running a dual-band two AP setup - 2.4GHz is the backstop, and there I've tuned the network for good performance everywhere - and my AP's for 5GHz are basically where people tend to be - in my house layout, the master bedroom and family room are directly adjacent, and my home office is on the other side of the house - so guess where 5GHz is _awesome_ and it overlaps - in the middle, by about -70 RSSI - which is really the sweet spot for clients looking to consider handoffs - either down band/up band, or from one AP to another..

I've placed the AP's based on mobile phones, not on laptops/desktops - and the other consideration is the media streamer/gaming boxes...

2.4GHz covers all of the house, the patio, and out the edge of the property with a smartphone - and it's a decent sized property at 26,000 sq ft... also considering that way out in the backyard (or out front), I'm basically looking at around 20 Mbit, more than enough for VOIP (2-way) or a unicast audio stream (Pandora, AirPlay audio, etc...

With WiFi, location is everything with regards to AP's...

Side note - I've got two AC1900 class AP's running at Casa de SFX - and I've moved from a 20/80 percent mix of AC/N clients to a 80/20 percent mix, and with no other changes, I've seen much better 5GHz results on my WLAN - enough so that clients that would have been B/G/N are now happy on the A/N/AC 5GHz band... and I'm running CH149 on one AP, with another in the DFS band - CH100...

With Single SSID, I keep 2.4GHz on common channel, at the moment, I'm on CH1 there (I've got a neighboring belkin draft N router running wide on CH11, and legacy Netgear 802.11g on CH6 as the two strongest SSID's, plus the usual clutter at -90 dB RSSI across the neighborhood - suburbs)

 

[sfx2000]

"Smooth and trouble-free" could be an automatic transmission, because it shifts without troubling the user, or a manual transmission, because no computer is as intelligent as a human. I think it is a question of preference; convenience vs full-control.

Minivans work fine with automatics but Formula-1 is exclusively manual. I do not mean to insinuate that your network is the minivan of WiFi networks or anything like that...

Taking your analogy a step further...

I've got an Acura RSX with a K20 engine and a 6 speed - the ECU is very tunable with Hondata software - I can do an absolute tune for Max Power - which will give me great 0-60 times, or I can do a decent street tune which gives me great driveability across the 90 percent of the time I'm not doing autocross...

I'd rather take that 90 percent of the time that the car works well - if I need to benchmark, I can load things up perhaps, but generally, I've got other things that are more important..

 

[RMerlin]

And philosophical discussions about control aside, this post demonstrates what I'm talking about in terms of differing experiences.

It seems that the majority of people are trying to prevent unpredictability based on poor client decision making.

I simply don't SEE poor client decision making in my environment. And the devices that many seem to indicate are the worst - iOS devices - are the BEST at making good decisions in my environment.

That's truly what baffles me - that the technology itself works so drastically different depending on the situation.

Here's a concrete scenario: let's say you have one mobile phone that only has 150 Mbps N support (which is very common), and a desktop with a 1300 Mbps 802.11ac interface. If the phone is close enough to the router and switches to the 5 GHz band, it will slow down the desktop that's connected with 802.11ac - in Wifi, the slowest client always slows down everyone else that's connected to the same radio at the same time while there is activity. So, someone downloading mail or application updates on his phone would slow down the desktop.

 

[htismaqe]

Here's a concrete scenario: let's say you have one mobile phone that only has 150 Mbps N support (which is very common), and a desktop with a 1300 Mbps 802.11ac interface. If the phone is close enough to the router and switches to the 5 GHz band, it will slow down the desktop that's connected with 802.11ac - in Wifi, the slowest client always slows down everyone else that's connected to the same radio at the same time while there is activity. So, someone downloading mail or application updates on his phone would slow down the desktop.

What is that desktop being used for? If it's web browsing, email, and general user traffic, they're not going to notice the performance difference.

If I have a workstation that needs that much bandwidth, they're connected via wired. Wireless is for mobility.

 

[sfx2000]

Here's a concrete scenario: let's say you have one mobile phone that only has 150 Mbps N support (which is very common), and a desktop with a 1300 Mbps 802.11ac interface. If the phone is close enough to the router and switches to the 5 GHz band, it will slow down the desktop that's connected with 802.11ac - in Wifi, the slowest client always slows down everyone else that's connected to the same radio at the same time while there is activity. So, someone downloading mail or application updates on his phone would slow down the desktop.

Not true... that's an old myth from the 11g days, but current chipsets do not have this problem.

Your N150 client will connect and maintain it's MCS rate assigned by the AP's radio, and the AC1300 client get's it's assigned MCS - the particular frame/frames will be transmitted at a given MCS, but the chip does not slow everyone in that BSS down to the lowest common rate in SU-MIMO...

In MU-MIMO - general implementation would be that all MU members of that frame would be limited to the lowest MCS rate, as all must be able to demodulate that frame - but even there, 11ac does allow for multiple MCS in a single MU frame.

The use case you might be considering is that Alice has a AC1300 desktop, and getting VHT MSC9 (3SS), and Bobby has a media streamer 15 meters away at N150 with a very low MCS rate, say MCS3 (Wide since we're all on 5GHz CH149), Bobby can starve Alice's connection of airtime, as his stream doesn't let her get her bits in edgewise...

 

[Chrysalis]

this was discussed some months ago also.

The consensus was it is situational, depending on the needs of the users in question.

In my case I have separate ssid's as I want to control which wireless point my devices connect to, but others prefer same ssid so their devices handle automatic.

 

[RMerlin]

Not true... that's an old myth from the 11g days, but current chipsets do not have this problem.

Your N150 client will connect and maintain it's MCS rate assigned by the AP's radio, and the AC1300 client get's it's assigned MCS - the particular frame/frames will be transmitted at a given MCS, but the chip does not slow everyone in that BSS down to the lowest common rate in SU-MIMO...

Let me rephrase that: for a given task (say, sending a 100 MB file), the slow client will occupy the bandwidth for a longer period of time than the fast client. The faster a client completes its task, the sooner it can relinquish the bandwidth to other clients.

Hence, you don't want to bundle slow clients with faster ones whenever possible. Such management has to be done either by manually assigning an SSID, or using a router-side technology such as Xstream.

 

[RMerlin]

What is that desktop being used for? If it's web browsing, email, and general user traffic, they're not going to notice the performance difference.

Could be uploading a backup to your NAS. Doing 4K video streaming. Or moving files around. Your pick.

That's still a concrete case where simply using manual SSID assignment will prevent that scenario from occurring.

 

[htismaqe]

Fair enough. I don't do any of those things from mobile devices though.