I'm running all ssid's the same, smart connect off, and using wifi analyzer to check, and to manually lock channels in on all three bands! "Asus is always horrible in steering channels on auto." The AC3200 is a Beast with this setup. Just doing this without any other tweaking makes this router amazing!
I too have an AC3200, and am running 3 SSID's, but all three are different. I really do fail to see how running a single SSID, and then having to use wifi analyzer each time to check which channel you are actually connecting with makes any sense, because you can't control which
band you are connecting with among your 5ghz radios. Now that may not make any difference if you are only connecting true 802.11ac devices to the 5ghz radios, but it sort of defeats the purpose of having two separate 5ghz radios, since you'll never know which one you are utilizing.
For example, I have 23 devices regularly connected to my AC3200. No .11g devices at all, and only a couple of 802.11n devices, all of which I only connect to the 2.4ghz band or one of the 5ghz radios, but not the other 5ghz radio (for reasons explained below). Everything else is connected to the two 5ghz radios, depending on how I want to balance the load, type of device, and distance from the router (since the lower band has slightly greater ability to penetrate walls, floors, etc., but which the higher band makes up for with slightly higher power output). The point though is that I want my 802.11ac devices to connect to the 5ghz bands that can provide true .11ac speed and connectivity, and everything else goes to the 2.4ghz band. The way you appear to be doing it, just leaves the choice about which radio band (not channel, but band) connect to up to your devices, and they will typically seek and find the strongest signal rather than selecting the widest channels or the appropriate band for a given device. Wifi analyzers (like InSSIDER, or Netgear's "Wifi Analyzer") are useful for seeing what channels others in your area using (and it can also reveal whether your neighbors are idiots and using the wrong channels that will only cause interference and contention among others, as when you have a neighbor using 40mhz channels on 2.4ghz, or any channels other than 1, 6 and 11), but they won't help you in determining where your client devices should be connecting.
I also don't really see what you're getting at when write that you "manually lock channels in an all three bands". So you set the channels and don't use "Auto". Um, ok. But that's sort of beside the point of what I'm getting at. Whether you use Channel 1, 6 or 11 for 2.4ghz or any particular channel among those available for 5ghz will affect only the potential for reducing device and network interference and
contention again, based on what your neighbors are using; it won't really help you to put particular classes of devices on the right band and frequency to obtain maximum performance from both router and client devices.
You can and should also actively set not only channel but also the width of that channel (and BTW, never use anything other than 20mhz width for 2.4ghz, since wider just makes you a bad neighbor), but that is only half the equation since you need to also know which band a device is connecting to in order to be able to ascertain whether it's getting the best performance possible. Most client devices can only choose band (e.g., 2.4 or 5ghz), but cannot select or differentiate between which frequency of channel number they will connect to and when you have two 5ghz bands, a client device typically won't know whether it's connecting with the high or low 5ghz band, or if you have channels set to 80 MHz wide, you can't know whether devices that need that width are connecting to the right band. You can't really know that unless you are using different SSID's, or unless you are using MAC address control for each of the radios. True, some devices like desktop or laptop wireless NIC's will give you access to settings and may allow a choice of which band (2.4 or 5ghz) will be preferred, but that's about all you can do. I'm not aware of any client NIC's that allow the client device to actually choose the
channel by number. So other than setting a "clean" channel, I am not sure why you'd want to use one SSID (unless you are concerned about roaming).
If you set the AC3200 to use the same SSID for all 3 radios, the only thing you're guaranteed to be able to do is connect, but you really won't know which
band you are connecting a device to, which sort of defeats the purpose of having three radios with at least two separate bands available for .11ac or a combo of .11ac/n devices (e.g., using one 5ghz band for both .11n/ac and the other for only .11ac). Stated differently, you give up an element of finer control doing things with only 1 SSID, at least as I see it.
Why? Because if your .11ac device is actually connected to the 2.4ghz band, it isn't going to be operating at its full or best capacity, since .11ac requires 5ghz and 80mhz channel width which is only available in the 5ghz spectrum. Likewise, if you connect an 802.11n device (which can only take advantage of 40mhz channel width) to a 5ghz band channel, it will then prevent that channel from operating at 80mhz width and will drop it down to 40mhz width, again defeating the purpose of having an 802.11ac band available for only your .11ac devices.
This is why, since I don't use Smart Connect, I use different SSID's for each of the three radios, i.e., I want to know what devices are connected to which radio (and which band of frequency) so that I can get maximum performance from my devices, depending on their 802.11 class. And it's why I only connect 802.11n devices (e.g., Rokus, Amazon Fire Stick, etc.) to the 5ghz radio that I have set to use 40mhz (and don't connect .11ac devices to that radio either), and connect all .11ac devices only to the 5ghz radio that is set to use 80mhz channel width. I also use MAC address control to keep straight which devices will actually connect to a particular radio band (as between the two 5ghz radios).
I'm not saying the way I'm doing things is the only way or that I'm getting better performance than you, but if you're not using Smart Connect, I really don't see the point of using a single SSID on a tri-banded router, particularly where you have one band (2.4ghz) that can never take advantage of 802.11ac speeds (because of the narrower channel widths), and you run the risk of potentially impairing .11ac's true benefits for .11ac devices if you are connecting .11n devices.
Just sayin.....
