temporarily turn off 5ghz wifi

[adrianjacobs]

hi, a few weeks ago i got some very useful info on how to temporarily turn off the 5ghz wifi so i could set up some smart devices that only run on 2.4ghz.  now i cant find how to do it again!

it was using the virgin media connect app i think.  can someone point me in the right direction again please?

[jbrennand]

Dont bother with the App - try this.

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Go into the Hub3 settings. Type in  http://192.168.0.1  into your web browser’s url box and login with settings password on the Hub's base sticker (or your own if you changed it). Then in Advanced>wireless>smart wifi - tick the disable “channel optimisation” box and save settings.  Then, go to advanced>wireless>security, rename the 2.4 & 5 GHz network ssid's.  Just change 'em to whatever you like and something that will differentiate them (e.g - xxxxx_2 & xxxxx_5) -- use the same password for simplicity,  Then, apply settings and restart the Hub.  Your 2 wifi networks will now be clearly separated - and you can then select the network you want to connect to individually from the "available networks" list on each device. 

Note all your wifi devices will need re-connecting to the new SSID's and passwords.
5 GHz is always better/faster and subject to less interference (and is better for iDevices ) than the 2.4 one - although the 2.4 one has the better "range" and some older/cheaper/dumber devices can only use this one. 

You should also use a wifi analyser App to check which 2.4 channels are being heavily used around you and move yours to one of numbers 1,6,11 that is least so, but it wont help if there is other interference.

See if these changes help - you will lose any “seamless roaming” benefits but it may not matter and you can always change the settings back by doing a " pinhole factory reset " if you prefer the way it was - or it doesn’t help.

[adrianjacobs]

Thanks, but I have too many smart(!?) devices to have to go around reconnecting them all, especially as its never as simple as it should be.

In the meantime, I got the app to work (in between multiple crashes) to get the 5.0ghz off and on again. 

Cheers again

[jbrennand · Accepted solution]

I should have said you dont need the App for that either. Just log into the Hub settings and navigate to the wireless page and tick the box for "Disable 5GHz Wireless" Save/Apply and log out - do the reverse to get it back

[adrianjacobs]

sorted - thanks