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2Ghz printer & 5Ghz wifi

Wudang

BOFH
Wudang
Joined
Jun 30, 2003
Messages
17,603
Location
People's Republic of South Yorkshire
We upgraded from FTTC to FTTP and I've just exhausted my monthly swearing quota trying to get my Brother HL-3150CDW wifi printer working. tl;dr it doesn't support 5Ghz wifi. The Brother install tool used my PCs SSID and kept telling me the failure to connect was probably a security error not that it couldn't see the SSID. Brother advise against dual-band wifi (and I haven't found that option on the new router) so we have separate 2.4 and 5 Ghz SSIDs.
Obviously this means to use the printer we have to connect to the 2GHz network which is suboptimal.
Icotera i4882-01 router.
Mesh? I had to return the mesh boxes and router to the old ISP. Could I add a mesh box and then a cable to connect the printer to the mesh box?
Or am I thinking wrong? Should we just use the 5GHz for 4k streaming etc and use the 2.4 for our PCs? The biggest demand would be wife's work video calls.
 
Wow, that router is locked down. Almost all options greyed out.

eta: the router maker's webpage describes it as a "managed wifi router" and no end user customer manuals seem available there.
Also no obvious setup options. Anyone know if this normal for FTTP? The router plugs into a small wall-mounted box. So if I bought a new router would that just work?
Sodding search engines keep sending me to bloody reddit which for tech is as much use as a mahogany frying pan.


and slowly breathe .....
eta 2 : ISPs help pages say I can use my own hub.
eta 3: We don't want to replace the printer as we rarely use it. It's used very very occasionally.
Also it's a 1GB/s package and individual devices say they between 200 and 700+ depending on their own capabilities.
 
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Tell me about it. So many devices only support 2.4g and definitely not mesh.


I just got another wifi router running 2.4g and kept the mesh mode for the stuff that can leverage it for better service. The 2.4g devices are all low speed so they don't miss out on anything.

It's crazy but that's just how it works. 2.4g chips are dirt cheap so that's what they put in cheap devices.
 
The printer did work with the mesh repeaters on our previous FTTC connection. That router (a Fritz! something) merged both bands into a single network somehow. The hub is sold as a managed solution and is locked down as I said and I can't RTFM as they only provide support to direct customers.
Our need to print is rare enough that I've just put an ethernet cable in it and if someone needs to print they can carry their laptop over.
 
a_unique_person said:
Tell me about it. So many devices only support 2.4g and definitely not mesh.


I just got another wifi router running 2.4g and kept the mesh mode for the stuff that can leverage it for better service. The 2.4g devices are all low speed so they don't miss out on anything.

It's crazy but that's just how it works. 2.4g chips are dirt cheap so that's what they put in cheap devices.
Click to expand...

That's how I do it too, it's got an SSID from about 4 routers back as I have some old devices that either no longer have apps available, or I can't remember what the apps are.
 
I generally prefer to have separate SSIDs for 2.4 and 5. The routers that use a single SSID for both bands do implement a band steering daemon, but too many devices are too dumb to understand what it's doing. I hate getting home, my phone picks up the 2.4 while in the driveway but won't switch over to 5GHz when I'm in the house unless I turn WiFi off and back on. You'd think ~70Mbps would be good enough to settle for the 2.4 but it's really noticeable when you aren't getting 600.

And for a printer, it's a low-enough bandwidth device that 2.4 should be fine. Only issue you might run into is that some versions of IOS don't recognize airprint printers if they're not on the same band as the phone. What I find more annoying is video devices like security cams and TVs that only work on 2.4 that will swamp every available bit of bandwidth on 2.4.

We tried to support a gentleman here at my work who was trying to run simultaneously about 24 wireless Ring cameras around his house (indoors and outdoors) that were pretty much unusable because of the limitations on the 2.4 band. Nothing you can do about that, unfortunately. Only recommendations we had were to switch to wired cams as much as possible, or setting up multiple APs to balance the cameras on multiple WiFi networks.
 
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I find using an ethernet cable to connect the pritner to the router and pulling an ip address works to add the pritner to the WiFi. I tend to crash my home network, so I have to do goofy stuff like that a lot.

I also use old routers as bridges for our workstations and home entertainment units.
 
2.4 speed is way more than fast enough for a printer or, apparently, 4k streaming. You'd have to test it though, as if your area is packed with streams...
 
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Or wire to the router. Or wireless to another router where the printer is, then wire the printer to it, faking it out.
 
For most purposes, 2.4g is more than fast enough - as mentioned earlier - but also, it has better coverage than 5g by personal experience. My WiFi router is in the downstairs den and my laptop doesn't have coverage upstairs unless I downshift the connection to 2.4g

I've heard the same complaint about 5g cell phone coverage. I don't know if that's the same issue or just a coincidence.
 
Ron Obvious said:
For most purposes, 2.4g is more than fast enough - as mentioned earlier - but also, it has better coverage than 5g by personal experience. My WiFi router is in the downstairs den and my laptop doesn't have coverage upstairs unless I downshift the connection to 2.4g

I've heard the same complaint about 5g cell phone coverage. I don't know if that's the same issue or just a coincidence.
Click to expand...

It is the same issue. 5g is at a higher frequency. This means that it cannot penetrate walls very well. But 2.5g and 4g can do so.
 
Maybe just get a cheap 2.4GHz WAP for the printer?
 
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P.J. Denyer said:
Maybe just get a cheap 2.4GHz WAP for the printer?
Click to expand...

I considered that as I have an old router or two somewhere.
However given the reply from Zzoomm "technical support" (a usage of both words with which I was previously unfamiliar) that they have no better doc than the one given me by the installer which is not much above the "this cable goes here" level I am going to buy my own.
I don't want my router configured by people who I don't trust as it's basically my gateway to my family's devices.
I'm currently looking at an Amazon eero 6+ mesh Wi-Fi router. It has a speed of 1gbps same as my broadband and I'm wondering if I should future proof. Then again 3 piece mesh system for £300 is tempting.
 
Wudang said:
I considered that as I have an old router or two somewhere.
However given the reply from Zzoomm "technical support" (a usage of both words with which I was previously unfamiliar) that they have no better doc than the one given me by the installer which is not much above the "this cable goes here" level I am going to buy my own.
I don't want my router configured by people who I don't trust as it's basically my gateway to my family's devices.
I'm currently looking at an Amazon eero 6+ mesh Wi-Fi router. It has a speed of 1gbps same as my broadband and I'm wondering if I should future proof. Then again 3 piece mesh system for £300 is tempting.
Click to expand...

I used my own routers for years, I thought the original BT Home hub was a piece of and didn't bother even trying again until the 4th Gen version which was okay. Linksys was always my 1st choice, which is nice because that's what my current provider supplies. But I've had an old 2.4 wap for years that's just plugged in to my network to handle the low bandwidth stuff like smart bulbs, switches & my Harmony remote so I don't have to find all the apps and relink them every time I change routers.
 
Trebuchet said:
That's assuming the printer has a cable connection, which my previous HP did not. WiFi or nothing!
Click to expand...

Yeah the previous ISP provided a mesh system and one unit was placed in the study so my desktop could plug in to it and a printer cable ready to plug in.
It's another reason I'm leaning towards the Eero 6+ mesh. The 1gb is way more than any of our PCs need and covers our current 3 4K TVs. If I for some reason decide to upgrade a single 2.5gb unit will be enough. We're not usually walking around while using our devices so switching from one unit to another is not something any of us have noticed.
 
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Please reconsider the mesh router system. I do WiFi installs for my employer (local ISP) and mesh networks cause more problems than they solve. If you're out in the countryside with not a single other WiFi networks in sight... have a home built between 1970 and 2000 that is over 2500 ft^2, and have no mobile devices that you carry with you when you leave the house, sure, go for it.

The mesh networks have to use twice as many WiFi channels as usual, because they need both a broadcast and a backhaul channel; don't lend themselves to easy placement since rarely is signal attenuation caused by range but moreso by intervening walls; and since mobile devices love to latch onto the strongest signal they can find (usually 2.4GHz as you approach your house) and sometimes ignore the band steering daemon provided by the mesh router, you often end up with a phone or tablet that doesn't pick up the 5GHz band when it should.

If you do have areas in your house with poor wireless signal reception, you're going to be much happier with a single router with one or more hardwired access points. The hardwired backhaul doesn't take up a 2 separate WiFi channels, reduces ping time since it's full duplex instead of half duplex, and more customizable router/AP combos allow more flexible WiFi configuration with separate SSIDs for each band. Speaking from experience here... I've replaced probably 25 or so mesh systems with router/AP combos and they outperform and improve on reliability compared to mesh systems.
 
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Thanks Yalius, appreciated. The house is 20 years old. Hmm I wonder if I still have the Powerline adapters. Before my previous ISP gave us the Fritz! mesh boxes I had Powerline adaptors wired to the router and another in our study* with the printer and my desktop wired to that. Then I'd just buy a router with a good range.
Luckily I have time to think about it as the ISP provided router works well enough, it's just too locked down and the help desk too clueless for my long term comfort.


*My wife works from home as a data migration PM and has long video calls so connectivity there is a big issue.
 
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