Asus BQ16 Little help required.

[Reinforcer]

Hi there,

Looking for a little help on this newly purchased BQ16, I don't currently have any WiFi 7 client devices as yet however I do have an S23 Ultra which has 6E support.

Is there any purpose to enabling MLO as yet and combining all bands as when I have tried it I am not having any issues other than when going slightly further a field the router keeps switching my phone to the 2.4ghz band where my internet access is much slower and I never had any issues with decent signal and good speeds on the 5ghz band on my previous router, It seems from what I can gather when enabling MLO globally there is no way to to disable 2.4ghz as it selects all 3 bands automatically without me being able to leave 2.4ghz out on a single SSID.

Also if I don't have the IOT/Guest network enabled I cannot connect my childs Amazon kids fire HD tablet to the network it just will not connect even though it sees the network and I did try using WPA2/WPA3-Personal to ensure some sort of compatibility for the 5ghz band but it refuse to connect unless I create a separate IOT network which I am trying to avoid because I have noticed the signal is worse when creating an IOT/Guest network compared to anything connected to the main network, I have no idea why it's doing this but the signal in my experience seems to worse on IOT for some bizarre reason in my testing.

And the last question what is the difference between "WiFi 7 Mode" Setting in the Main network general section and then MLO mode in the same Main network but advanced section, I thought these 2 meant the same thing but they seem to be independent of each and can each be toggled off or on?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kokorone]

From my understanding using the WiFi 7 Mode toggle changes the security settings to use AES-GCMP-256 rather than just AES256 which can break functionality with a good portion of devices even if you have WPA2/WPA3-Personal enabled. The IOT network by default does not have that enabled due to compatibility reasons. On the other side MLO is a separate toggle than WiFi 7 to enable the multi channel aggregation between 2.4, 5, and 6 Ghz.

 

[Reinforcer]

From my understanding using the WiFi 7 Mode toggle changes the security settings to use AES-GCMP-256 rather than just AES256 which can break functionality with a good portion of devices even if you have WPA2/WPA3-Personal enabled. The IOT network by default does not have that enabled due to compatibility reasons. On the other side MLO is a separate toggle than WiFi 7 to enable the multi channel aggregation between 2.4, 5, and 6 Ghz.

Thanks for that, That's interesting, I wonder if disabling WiFi 7 mode enables the devices that can't currently connect to the 5ghz bands work, Also it would be interesting to see if that would break MLO entirely or not when I eventually get a WiFi 7 tri band PCIE Card.

 

[jzchen]

AES is 128 bit if I'm not mistaken. AES+GCMP256 is 256 bit.... MLO allows multi-band (simultaneous) use by a single client. WiFi 7 opens up 320 MHz bandwidth, as well as 4K QAM. If you don't have a WiFi 7 device it makes no sense to turn these on. I have a single WiFi 7 phone out of 40 ish devices, and I turn MLO off as it takes up too much bandwidth (BQ16 Pro and GT-BE98 Pro node. Since 6 GHz is split for me I turned on WiFi 7 on 6 GHz-2, left the 6GHz-1 in a setting more compatible with my son's 6E MacBook Pro).

It's easy to break MLO settings with MLO enabled firmware. Sometimes it doesn't warn you that you are. (Toggle MLO off, then back on, and it will reset the settings required for it, and include a message like "settings aren't currently correct for MLO, but they will be auto configured". That means you knocked out one of the required settings at least).

Since MLO requires WiFi 7, all the combined bandwidth is switched to 256 bit encryption, and some, if not all, will have trouble with that. I have seen non-WiFi 7 clients able to connect, but don't work right. That is why there is a second IoT "Legacy" SSID that it requests from you, when you enable MLO, for the non-WiFi 7 devices.

I haven't said this anywhere else here but I still think it is a better choice to choose a WiFi 7 router over 6E or 6. It may seem expensive up front BUT I'd say only incrementally so from a 6E router. Let's compare for example: a GT-AXE16000 would set you back how much at current pricing? For the difference you made the right decision. (This may be contradictory to mainstream thought on here)...

 

[Reinforcer]

AES is 128 bit if I'm not mistaken. AES+GCMP256 is 256 bit.... MLO allows multi-band (simultaneous) use by a single client. WiFi 7 opens up 320 MHz bandwidth, as well as 4K QAM. If you don't have a WiFi 7 device it makes no sense to turn these on. I have a single WiFi 7 phone out of 40 ish devices, and I turn MLO off as it takes up too much bandwidth (BQ16 Pro and GT-BE98 Pro node. Since 6 GHz is split for me I turned on WiFi 7 on 6 GHz-2, left the 6GHz-1 in a setting more compatible with my son's 6E MacBook Pro).

It's easy to break MLO settings with MLO enabled firmware. Sometimes it doesn't warn you that you are. (Toggle MLO off, then back on, and it will reset the settings required for it, and include a message like "settings aren't currently correct for MLO, but they will be auto configured". That means you knocked out one of the required settings at least).

Since MLO requires WiFi 7, all the combined bandwidth is switched to 256 bit encryption, and some, if not all, will have trouble with that. I have seen non-WiFi 7 clients able to connect, but don't work right. That is why there is a second IoT "Legacy" SSID that it requests from you, when you enable MLO, for the non-WiFi 7 devices.

I haven't said this anywhere else here but I still think it is a better choice to choose a WiFi 7 router over 6E or 6. It may seem expensive up front BUT I'd say only incrementally so from a 6E router. Let's compare for example: a GT-AXE16000 would set you back how much at current pricing? For the difference you made the right decision. (This may be contradictory to mainstream thought on here)...

Yes it is as you and @Kokorone described to do with the newer WiFi 7 encryption, I have left the main network with all bands enabled other than 2.4 as I don't use it and now every device including the kids Amazon tablets connect properly with the "WiFi 7" mode button disabled.

I created a separate MLO rule for the future when I do upgrade my desktop PC to Windows 11 24H2 and purchase a Triband MLO PCIE adaptor to be able to take full advantage of that however it's currently disabled as I having some weird issues with erratic download speeds with the MLO Guest Network Enabled.