LeeA wrote

I had my router set on 'smart enable' and the signal kept dropping..so, I clicked off 'smart enable' and wish to use both the 2.4 and the 5 as separate bands.  The problem is no device I have can find the 5G band which is Tp-Link _3b20_5g.   The 2.4 is the same less the _5g.   After I made the cahnge, I rebooted the router and still nothing can find the Tp-Link_3b20_5G band.  Ideas?

@LeeA 

Is this a TYPO or did you do a COPY and PASTE, "Tp-Link _3b20_5g"? There is a 'blank' between 'k' and '-'.

I will assume a typo though as it is OK later on in the post.

Have you tries some other name for the SSID? Like 'My5G' or anything else to see if that makes it work, assuming the SSID is not set to be hidden and the radio is set to transmit the SSID.

@ArcherC8 Thanks for trying...I've since discovered that the card in my desktop (Dell 1705) is not a dual band card.  i guess I just need a dual band wifi plug in adapter (Ihope).

@IrvSp It seems that the router is doing it's job, but i just discovered that the wifi card in my dell is not a dual band card, so hopefully using a dual band apapter will do the trick.  Thanks for trying.

@LeeA I've just bought an AX6000 and have been playing around with the Settings having upgraded the Firmware to the latest version. Something I noticed was that the 2.4G & 5G networks were available until I selected 'Smart Connect' :-(  At that point, the 5G option disappeared from the UI. When I de-selected 'Smart Connect' both networks re-appeared - but I couldn't re-connect to the 5G :-(  After a few minutes scratching my head, I noticed the 5G SSID was showing the same ID as the 2.4 !!  A manual edit of the 5G SSID back to what I had previously named it solved the issue.  Suggest it's worth a check that's not happened to others ?!

@ArcherC8  Thanks very much.  As it turned out, I since my 6 year old computer wasn't equipted for the 5g band, I bought a USB TP wifi extender adapter which updated the wifi ... it works fine now.

@ArcherC8 Thanks for your reply; yes I agree. Like lots of 'Smart' features, they often aren't...or at least you lose control of how it behaves. I didn't liked the way it would assign you to 2.4G as the seemingly default network (understandable as the lowest common standard). On my previous ASUS router, you could manually configure 'hand-over' based on signal strength. A Preferred Band tickbox would be a nice addition!

@Ciren_Jules 

There are more than one maker of chips for Smart Connect. Some have 'options' that the 'user' (which means the firmware producer) can enable. Most common I think are 'load leveling' and 'dynamic'. According to TP-Link's Smart Connect pages (https://www.tp-link.com/us/solution/smart-connect/https://www.tp-link.com/us/solution/smart-connect/ and https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/stories/detail/193) that both are enabled. Load Leveling could be in some circumstances, the most troublesome. Depends on the 802.11 speed mix of devices... can cause faster devices to use the lower speed band.

I had/have another Mfg. router. As I recall that one had stored the old 5Ghz SSID and when Smart Connect was turned off, it restore the prior SSID (and P/W).

One problem it seems many people who have enabled Smart Connect is that they think since they only see a single SSID that the router stopped transmitting 5Ghz or by looking at how a device connects, they think it is only connected to the 2.4Ghz band.

On most devices, and even I guess some TP-Link routers, one can't tell what Frequency or Channel the device has connected to? I'm not using SC at all, much prefer manual control of my devices, but other than the connected SSID on the device, the router (Archer A20 in my case) can't show me who is connected to what, all I can get from the router pages is an IP Address basically. However, Tether does detail who is connected to what band (not sure if using SC this would happen). 

In Windows at least I can see the CONNECTED SPEED. With that 'limited knowledge' and knowing what the device is capable of (depends on the device, 802.11 N devices can connect at different speeds, as can AC devices) I can usually deduce which Band it would connect to. Depending on router for instance 2.4Ghz bands can connect up to 600Mbs for N devices, 5Ghz up to 1300Mbs for AC, 867 for N devices, so the connection speed would be a good indicator of what band one was connected too. Of course one would need to know the router Speed as well. For instance, most 1900 speed routers would support 600 connect speed on the 2.4Ghz band and 1200 on the 5Ghz band. However, h/w on the network adapter on the device may not be able to reach those speeds so the user does need to know the device capability.

Ciren_Jules wrote

On my previous ASUS router, you could manually configure 'hand-over' based on signal strength.

Actually, reading between the lines on the links above it may be done automatically?

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Smart Connect relies on an advanced algorithm that not only automatically determines which band is best for each device,but also constantly monitors the overall status of each device to determine if and when a particular device would benefit from being automatically reassigned to a different band.

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I'm thinking this would apply to a moving device mostly, like one connected to 5Ghz band and when reaching the limits of the band distance switching to the 2.4Ghz that has a stronger signal at distance. Not sure though if one were to come back to the area where the band signals were basically equal that it would switch the device back.

Ciren_Jules wrote

 A Preferred Band tickbox would be a nice addition!

That would be nice for sure. Do you know of a router that has that? I would think that wouldn't 'play well' with the other options for Smart Connect though? Besides if the user know that why would they need Smart Connect? Also, wouldn't one want that based on device? Case in point, my HP Printer. It can use both 2.4 and 5Ghz bands. Not used heavily and I can wait for a page to print. Why would I put it on the 5Ghz band to complete with other 5Ghz devices for bandwidth? My Smart TV came with a USB dualband Network Adapter. All it needs for Streaming usually is 10Mbps, Why would I want that on a 6Ghz band too... If anything that checkbox would need to be set per device.