I had to replace my home wireless router due to end of life and random problem. So I decided to switch from the Netgear wireless router I had to the newer Cisco branded "Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Router.N900" ... mainly because for the life of the Netgear... I had consistent quirks. I owned the original Linksys WRT54G router and never had issues so thus my decision to switch back to Linksys.
The setup had an initial issue in that the included CD with the setup app didn't work out of the box. So I contacted technical support using their chat-support and was directed to install a different package...which worked fine.
Everything appeared to work fine PC wise as far as connectivity goes. I kept the same SSID and password as the previous router and all my devices connected without issue. However... all the mobile devices and my Wi-Fi Thermostat kept disconnecting and reconnecting every 10 seconds or so. In doing some research since I couldn't figure out what was going on since all the Windows and Linux PCs were fine... I found the problem and the resolution.
These new Dual-Band Wireless-N and Wireless-AC routers ... similar to wireless home phones ... are now using both the 2.4Ghz -AND- 5Ghz frequencies. The issue spawned from using 1 single SSID (wireless network name) for both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz frequencies. If you only set 1 SSID ... your devices will constantly flip-flop their connections between the 2 frequencies because they are competing against each other. Most devices are set to connect to the best/strongest signal so the second one of the frequencies seems to had a higher signal ... the device switches.
The simple fix ... make sure you don't use the Automated WPS for the dual-band routers, but rather manually set the SSID settings to use 2 SSIDs. Then on your devices, just set them up to connect to one of the SSIDs. For my devices, several are incapable of using the 5Ghz frequency, so I set them to use the SSID assigned to 2.4Ghz. All the other devices like PCs and newer mobile devices that can use the 5Ghz frequency, I set to use the SSID assigned to the 5Ghz frequency.
Since it was driving me nuts, but I found a resolution. I figured I would blog about it and share the knowledge.
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