How many SSIDs should be setup in tri-band router

[la chupacabra]

Hello All,

Just have a quick question, as I need to setup NETGEAR R8000-100UKS Nighthawk X6. It will be used by around 30 users (both Macs and Windows) and since it's tri-band router I was wondering if I should create 3 SSIDs, each one of them with a different name and connect some of the computers to each of them
or
I can name each of 3 SSIDs the same, and connect all computers to that network and the router will take care of the rest (in sense that it will spread all connections between all 3 networks which are named exactly the same).
Which option shall go for?

 

[i7Baby]

Yes - give them different SSIDs eg Home 1, Home2 etc. Then just use the same passphrase on each.

 

[bill001g]

Both options are good and bad.

The first requires you to manually find a way to divide your users and some how communicate this to them. Gets hard if you have different groups of users at different times.

The second it is not the router that decides which to use it is the end device. The device will pick what it thinks is the strongest signal at that moment....most time the 2.4g band.. and connect to that. It has no way to tell what other users are using and which radios are being utilized more it purely looks at signal strength. In worst case all the users could connect to the same radio and none on the others.

There really is no good solution to this problem with consumer grade equipment. There are special device drivers in commercial solutions that allow the router/ap to control the radio the end device connect to but this is only used in very large installations where there is full control of the end user machines.

 

[g90814]

The user manual explains the Tri-Band and Smart Connect features pretty well.

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/R8000/R8000_UM_20Jan2015.pdf

Smart Connect looks like the way to go for 5Ghz, especially in your situation.

Review Pages 58-64.

 

[la chupacabra]

Thanks for all advice. I was thinking to use Smart Connect for 2 5GHz band networks, but eventually I created 3 seperate SSIDs:
1. Network 1 - 2.4GHz network for around 25 laptops as none of them support 5GHz
2. Network 2 - 5GHz for 6 iMacs, which use most of the bandwidth
3. Network 3 - 5GHz for all mobile phones (around 30 of them), once they are on seperate network they don't slow down other computer connections (+ they support 5GHz band)
Thanks again