1. Never be too proud to ask for advice. Summary: Router : RT-AC3200 supplied by her family member, smart connect disabled (it caused issues). 1x 2.4GHz channel, 2x 5GHz channels. An elderly friend of mine lives in a dorma bungalow, solid walls, 2 upstairs bedrooms. She has quite a lot of wireless devices, majority of which are on the 2.4GHz channel, an Amazon echo in various forms in every room, smart TV's, firesticks, WIFI plugs, WIFI bulbs, WIFI led strips, ring video doorbell, ring chime the list goes on. The issue seems to be that most of these devices connect to the 2.4GHz channel including the Ring doorbell, it's got to the point where connecting to the 2.4GHz channel is becoming flakey. Whatever can connect to the 5GHz channels is as so and that's fine. Would a mesh WIFI system fix the issue of too many 2.4GHz devices connecting to the router at once? The bungalow isn't large, but has solid walls and a lot of 2.4GHz devices. Advice on a postcard please folks! Thanks
5Ghz doesn't travel well through brick walls or over great distance, seems to peter out from about 5m 2.4Ghz does better in this regard, this is likely why you have lots of things connected to the 2.4Ghz and not the 5Ghz if its and old solidly built place with brick interior walls rather than stud walls etc. I had this problem in my house, just getting ropey 2.4Ghz, a Mesh style setup helped me extend the reach of the faster 5Ghz network Echos do have 5Ghz and would choose it if they find it. The older Ring stuff is 2.4Ghz. It is unlikely that a lot of your 2.4Ghz devices are using the network all the time so I would doubt contention issues but it is something to bear in mind and on a mesh system they would connect to the node closest at 2.4Ghz and the communication back to main router would be on 5Ghz so it would take the load off the main router 2.4Ghz if that was an issue. ASUS have a great Ai Mesh setup and that router looks like it could cope having tri band it could do wifi backhaul on one but might be too old for mesh, look in its settings. Doesn't stop you from configuring one of the 5Ghz channels as a comms chnannel for another router which could serve the rest of the house.
There's loads of bulbs, light strips, sockets, older Amazon devices, older smart TVs etc that are 2.4Ghz only which is why almost everything is connected to that.
Wander around her bungalow with wifiman app etc and see what networks bands/channels and strengths are around in different spots, you might have reach but external interference. There are also heatmap apps on PC if you have a laptop. Once you have a good understanding of the wifi heatmap you can look at what you need to do to close the holes and get performance up, poor signal leads to packet loss and sucky performance. Having lots of devices doesn't mean you are overloaded, as they don't all communitcate all the tome, is just one possibility.
