Ban selection

[Moudar]

Hi,

Why do clients choose 2,4 ove 5Ghz ? AP is 2802 (56,52)* 40MHz

All these devices support Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

[Leo Laohoo]

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@Moudar wrote:

Why do clients choose 2,4 ove 5Ghz 

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Very common behaviour especially if the wireless NIC's driver have never been updated before.

[Moudar]

Is there anything that can be done to alter this behavior?

I am pretty sure that an HP-PC which is in this list has the latest drivers on it!

[Karsten Iwen]

Clients do silly things ...

Are you only pretty sure the drivers are up to date or have you confirmed it? The Windows out-of-the-box drivers are often not up to date.

And you could test if Band-Steering and/or reducing the TX on 2.4 can improve the situation. But better talk to the person who did the wireless design.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@Moudar wrote:
I am pretty sure that an HP-PC which is in this list has the latest drivers on it!

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Prove it.  

Post the complete output to the DOS command "netsh wlan show drivers".

[Moudar]

Interface name: Wi-Fi

    Driver                    : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz
    Vendor                    : Intel Corporation
    Provider                  : Intel
    Date                      : 2022-11-23
    Version                   : 22.190.0.4
    INF file                  : oem388.inf
    Type                      : Native Wi-Fi Driver
    Radio types supported     : 802.11b 802.11g 802.11n 802.11a 802.11ac 802.11ax
    FIPS 140-2 mode supported : Yes
    802.11w Management Frame Protection supported : Yes
    Hosted network supported  : No
    Authentication and cipher supported in infrastructure mode:
                                Open            None
                                Open            WEP-40bit
                                Open            WEP-104bit
                                Open            WEP
                                WPA-Enterprise  TKIP
                                WPA-Enterprise  CCMP
                                WPA-Personal    TKIP
                                WPA-Personal    CCMP
                                WPA2-Enterprise TKIP
                                WPA2-Enterprise CCMP
                                WPA2-Personal   TKIP
                                WPA2-Personal   CCMP
                                Open            Vendor defined
                                WPA3-Personal   CCMP
                                Vendor defined  Vendor defined
                                WPA3-Enterprise GCMP-256
                                OWE             CCMP
    IHV service present       : Yes
    IHV adapter OUI           : [00 00 00], type: [00]
    IHV extensibility DLL path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\IntelIHVRouter10.dll
    IHV UI extensibility ClSID: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
    IHV diagnostics CLSID     : {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
    Wireless Display Supported: Yes (Graphics Driver: Yes, Wi-Fi Driver: Yes)

[Leo Laohoo]

Are there any 5.0 Ghz wireless clients associated to the same APs?

[Moudar]

Not just now!

What about Ipads that are the same model and run same IOS version. 20 pieces at the same classroom, the AP is in the classroom.

About 15 pieces connects to 5Ghz and some connects to 2.4.

Is there anything that can be done to make them connects to 5Ghz (not removing 2.4)?

[JPavonM]

As previously said, clients use internal algorithms to select which band to connect to, and the way they decide which band to connect to is programmed by the developers of the wireless adapter's firmware (signal sstrenth, SNR, channel utilization, AP load, ...). There is nothing we can do to affect that decition other than disabling 2.4 GHz. If they were Windows, you would be able to tweak the driver options to prefer 5-GHz band, but on these kind of devices there is no way to tune that.

The only way for you to improve this behavious is to provide connectivity only on 5-GHz band for them and disable 2.4-GHz band.

[Karsten Iwen]

As mentioned, BandSteering and reducing the signal strength on 2.4 can influence the client decision to move to 5 GHz.

[JPavonM]

Using vendor features such as band selection could improve the behaviour BUT, at the end, it is a client decition to connect to one AP or another, one band or another. Maybe upgrading drivers/firmwares could improve that, maybe not, but the only way to ensure maximum performance using 5GHz band is to split access into different ESSIDs per band, or do not use 2.4 GHz band for corporate devices.

[Karsten Iwen]

These advises are certainly better in the long run, but likely more problematic for a short term solution. But nevertheless it should be investigated if 2.4 is really needed.

[Moudar]

it is needed. As you can see many are connecting there. But i am sure that most of these can 5Ghz but connects to 2,4

The question is how to start that investigation? 

[JPavonM]

If this is an unconrolled environment with users connecting BYOD devices, then a way to start would be to reconfigure the current SSID to work only on 5-GHz, and create a new one with a suffix like "-legacy" to support only 2.4-GHz band and inform the users that cannot see the SSID on 5-GHz band, to connect to the legacy one.

If nobody complain then all clients are 5GHz-capable, but if some then you will know that all that can operate on 5- would be having the best performance so reducing user complaints to the minimum.

[Leo Laohoo]

You've posted an output for an Intel AX2xx wireless NIC.  Are these wireless clients joining 2.4 Ghz all the same wireless NIC, i. e.  AX2xx?