WiFi woes

Our home wifi signal (from stock virgin router), has been split onto separate 2ghz and 5ghz signals. This is to allow a couple of smart devices (plug/light) to connect (they only work with the 2ghz signal).

The problem now is that if the other devices (phones, tablets, etc) lose the 5ghz signal they lose wifi altogether (rather than switching between the 2ghz and 5ghz automatically). My daughter was merrily streaming disney the other day on mobile data not wifi without any of us realising!

Is there a better way to achieve this 2/5ghz split? E.g. is there a way to have one 2ghz signal for the smart devices and a combined 2/5 ghz signal for everything else?

I can't be the only one having this issue judging my the amount of smart devices on sale (I saw a cooker extractor yesterday that is phone controllable!).

 

If 2ghz/5ghz were merged, would not the smart devices connect to the 2ghz signal by default. If they only work on 2ghz that's what they'd seek?

 

There is but I dont think through a stock hub.

I have unifi gear and its set that the IoT devices are on a separate wifi VLAN, thats just set to 2ghz. For everything else its the standard vlan with both 2ghz and 5ghz. The IoT vlan cannot see the rest of the netwrok either through firewall rules.

That being said I think they would just connect to the 2ghz regardless

 

From memory the instructions tell you to split the signal, but i will have a play around. We're getting a new broadband provider next week, and it will be a couple of days before the old one disconnects. That'll give me a couple of days to fiddle without disrupting everything.

 

Some routers allow you to create a guest network on 2ghz. If you are able to do this, whack the smart devices on the guest network.

 

Assign both 2ghz and 5ghz networks the same SSID. Any device that will only connect via 2ghz should be able to negotiate a connection via 2ghz.

If it doesn’t, I wouldn't trust it anywhere near my network as if it can’t manage that, god knows what other vulnerabilities might be baked into it’s carelessly implemented firmware!

 

then it doesn't work. It'll either connect on 2Ghz or not. It will not randomly connect to another frequency.

 

Its why any of my IoT cannot see the rest of my network, some of them are super janky lol.