Beamforming - To, or Not To
Synopsis: I have the X20 wi-fi 6 deco at home and it was operating in "Wireless Router" mode, as I've always done; Fast Roaming enabled and Beamforming enabled. In short, Beamforming was causing internet connectivity issues with some of my devices at home but not others. I disabled Beamforming from within the Deco app and all devices immediately connected just fine.
Details: Yesterday, streaming YouTubeTV was acting up on both of my smart TV's that were both streaming the game (I normally get about 400mbps DL speeds through AT&T fiber)...a little bit of connection but super grainy and the game was buffering/lagging. Couldn't really figure it out last night.
Then, today my work laptop and personal iPhone nearly lost connection to the internet entirely (my wife's as well) even though my personal laptop was perfectly fine showing over 200mbps DL speeds....all devices connected wirelessly to my home network. DL speeds were literally down to .14mbps on my other devices though...so random. I thought it was my ISP, AT&T, but a wired ethernet connection was perfectly fine on my personal laptop and my Xbox and both Deco app and the ATT app showed near 400 mbps DL speeds testing.
Then I thought maybe it was because I set priority on some devices (within Deco app), so I turned off all device priorities. I optimized the network a few times form the deco app....restarted my gateway router...kept trying speed tests on the devices with little to no connection...but my work laptop, my iphone and a couple other devices still lacked connectivity while others were fine. Within the deco app I made sure nothing was blacklisted, etc. and kept looking for my devices to find connectivity again. Finally, from within the Deco app, I turned off beamforming (More > Advanced > Beamforming > Disable) and that corrected the issue instantly. My iPhone and work laptops both had internet access with DL speeds way up again, as did my wife's laptop and our smart TVs. No other issues after that. I guess beamforming was not up to the task (too many devices streaming? confusing the app with settings like placing priority on 2 devices, etc while also trying to beamform? idk)
Beamforming...it was trying to help but getting in the way...such a Bert Macklin of this whole situation.