BT Hub 2 Wireless Bands 2.4GHz & 5GHz

[caravanj]

We're switching from Plusnet to BT as we want Digital Voice.

We have a lot of smart devices which all have to use the 2.4GHz band. Our Plusnet Hub 2 router allows for the 5 GHz band to be disabled.

Does the BT Hub 2 allow the 5GHz band to be disabled?

[Keith_Beddoe · Accepted solution]

Yes.

[caravanj]

@Keith_Beddoe 

Many thanks for confirming this. It's only an issue at the device registration point as quite often I would get a message saying that the device wasn't compatible with 5GHz & the only way round it that I found was to disable 5GHz & then enable it again when the device was registered on the router. 

When we upgraded our Plusnet routers I changed the new router's SSID & password to the ones that all the devices already recognised & all the devices worked seamlessly so hopefully I can do this with the BT Hub2.

[licquorice]

It's the device you're using for setup that needs to be 2.4Ghz - the coexisting 5Ghz network doesn't actually matter. The  device is listening for packets broadcast on the physical layer to tell it the SSID and password, so the phone has to be on that band to send them. Which is a problem for phones that don't let you specify the band, so the fix is to turn off 5Ghz, not because the device cares, but to force the phone to use 2.4.

I.e, the devices are connecting in ad-hoc mode rather than via the router.

A single SSID is required for true band steering of dual band devices.

[caravanj]

@licquorice 

Thanks for your reply.

To stop the annoying incompatible band message  when registering a device I disable 5Ghz until the device is registered & then enable it again.

When 5GHz is enabled my phone shows both 2.4 & 5 as separate networks but I always ensure that the the 2.4GHz is the active network.

Regarding the SSID & password I'll do what I did when our Plusnet router was upgraded from Hub 1 to Hub 2 which was to change the Hub 2 settings to those of the Hub 1 so I didn't have to re-register everything.