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Hub 4 PODs and Separate 2.4 and 5 SSIDS

kevkdg
Dialled in

Hello,

I have a Hub 4 with some SMART plugs/doorbell/camera's connected on the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi as these won't work on 5 GHz.  I recall I had trouble getting them to connect when it was a combined 2.4/5 SSID so ended up creating two separate SSIDs to get around this.

I have upgraded to the 1 GB Broadband package, and as the PODs are free on this package I decided to give them a try in order to eliminate some Wi-Fi blackspots.

I am wondering though, will these work with the separate SSID's still?  If not I guess I will have to go back to one, so thought maybe the "Guest Network" could be enabled to handle these 2.4 GHz SMART devices, but I can see no option after enabling Guest Network to specify the frequency for it.... any ideas?

 

Thanks

12 REPLIES 12

jbrennand
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Nope Pods will only work with the combined SSID and smart wifi enabled.  Not sure re. Guest Network


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John
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I do not work for VM. My services: HD TV on VIP (+ Sky Sports & Movies & BT sport), x3 V6 boxes (1 wired, 2 on WiFi) Hub5 in modem mode with Apple Airport Extreme Router +2 Airport Express's & TP-Link Archer C64 WAP. On Volt 350Mbps, Talk Anytime Phone, x2 Mobile SIM only iPhones.

You can’t amend the guest network frequency nor will if get extended by the Pods

*****
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I do not work for Virgin Media - all opinions expressed are of my own and all answers are provided from my own and past experiences.
Office 365, Dynamics CRM and Cloud Computing Jedi

thanks, but what is the guest network frequency, is it 2.4, 5 or both.

@ Kev

You can order up to 3 pods so I would just remove the old ones and try one pod 1st and if everything works then order more if you need more.

First POD arrived today.

Combined the SSID and then tried to connect my Amazon SMART plugs but they would NOT connect.  I had to disable 5Ghz, connect them initially via the Alexa App THEN re-enable 5Ghz and they now happily connect even after powering them off (with both frequencies on the combined SSID).

For other devices though, I wish there was a way of forcing them down the MUCH faster 5Ghz connection as some are getting connected on the 2.4Ghz which is running much slower.

 

legacy1
Alessandro Volta
You need to go down root of getting your own wireless router with 1Gb ports and put hub in modem mode.

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I'm beginning to think that might be the only option too!!  Very annoying!

I read here Intelligent Wifi Pods FAQs | Virgin Media that "You can also connect multiple WiFi Pods to each other via Ethernet, and the WiFi Pods will use this to talk to each other rather than WiFi."

With this in mind I connected the POD to the Router via a long ethernet cable in the hope it would use this for "Backhaul" (as speeds when connected via POD seemed about 50% than that when connected via Router directly on 5GHz).....  However all it did was knock my router out which I then rebooted only for it to show a solid red light (causing much panic).  I rebooted again and all seemed fine, BUT just to be safe I did a factory reset on the router!  Not sure why this would occur?

Also, when a device connects via the POD it does NOT appear to show in the connected devices list on the router itself.... very strange!  So it is sometimes hard to tell if it has established a 2.4GHz or 5GHz connection as the POD handles both..... Any ideas?

Finally, can MAC filtering be used to force connections down a specific frequency (2.4 or 5).  I guess my point above might cause an issue here if devices connecting via the POD are not showing as connected on the router.

Have you tried disabling the 5Ghz network, connecting the 2.4ghz stuff and then reenabling 5Ghz? I'm not sure if that'll work but worth a go.

Also I know that some 2.4Ghz have issues connecting to the hub 4 but if you have a way of focing them to connect to a different access point, they should connect fine to the wifi pods on 2.4Ghz. You can use a wifi analyser to see the access points and you should be able to work out which one is your pod's 2.4Ghz.

There's also an option within the hub in advanced settings / wireless / security... where you can 'add device', using the device name, MAC address and then select the Ghz that it connects at.

Thanks... yep I managed to get the 2.4GHz devices to connect the first time by disabling 5GHz, then after re-enabling it all has been fine.

 

Just experimenting with the wireless MAC options to see if I can force 5GHz connections for most devices.  As long as this works with the POD as I notice devices connecting via the POD do NOT show up on the router as connected devices!!!