eduardohl wrote

 

another annoying issue with Smart Connect: when playing stadia, AX6000 won't switch you to 5ghz for optimail performance, so that need to literally switch the 2.4ghz off so I can play.... super annoying... PLEASE add the function to force devices on the right band.

@eduardohl 

If you WANT devices on the RIGHT band, then do it MANUALLY. Smart Connect doesn't always work that way.

Check these links:

https://www.tp-link.com/us/solution/smart-connect/

https://community.tp-link.com/us/home/kb/detail/342

If you read those two, they give differing suggestions on how they work.

One says it does WHAT you want, the other implies it can assign a device to bands based on band load, trying to keep it even.

What it actually means the ROUTER will control 'what' and 'when' a device will connect to a specific band.

If you don't know what band a device would work better on, than Smart Connect is for you. Putting a device on a band that normally would have higher performance will not cause a problem for THAT device but migth impact the other faster devices. As you seem to have discovered, the reverse is true as well. The slower devices have no impact but the faster device on the slow band does have an impact.

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I wanted to note that I'm having a similar problem to OP. I don't have Smart Connect turned on, because I like to steer certain devices to the 2.4 GHz network (mostly infrastructure devices like IoT stuff and printers). Periodically, my systems will lose the ability to talk to certain devices; it usually manifests itself with printers, but that's likely because it's easiest to notice when that happens.

A router reboot will fix it, sometimes for a long while, sometimes for a matter of minutes. I've noticed that, on my Macs, the ARP table shows "incomplete" instead of the MAC address for the devices I'm trying to connect to, while on Windows machines there's no entry for them at all. The only workaround that does anything, other than rebooting the router, is to add a static ARP entry on both devices, but that's not something you can do on a printer. And it's not a brand issue - I have three printers, two Brothers and one Epson, and they all go offline at the same time. All three are on the 2.4GHz network with static IPs (to be clear, not DHCP reservations, hard-coded static IPs on the device).

I've already ordered an AX11000 router that's a different brand, and it's going to cost me $160 more. At least Costco has a good return policy so I can get the $300 back that I wasted on the AX11000.