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Hi

Thanks to some inspiration found here I now have the Tenda MW5 mesh in our house working on backhaul.

Next problem:

Four rooms in the house use Google TV with Chromecast (4K) to facilitate multimedia and multi room audio. All are near MW5 nodes, and all report excellent signal. Internet speeds are 100Mbps or better on all nodes when a 5GHz connection is made. On 2.4GHz it's ~30Mbps.

The load on each secondary node is usually no more than 2 devices. The primary node reports between 6 and 10, mostly cabled ethernet devices.

Based on information found here and elsewhere, the Tenda primary node is configured as
  • Fast Roaming = ON
  • Capacity oriented mode = OFF (typically there are 10 to 15 devices connected at any time)
  • Smart Assistant = DISABLED

However, whether the GoogleTV's connect on 5Ghz or 2.4GHz is hit or miss. Most times they connect on 5Ghz, but after 10 or so minutes drop back to the 2.4Ghz band. Makes the watching of HD/4K content a miserable experience.

Analysing the wifi signal & internet connection speeds there seems no reason for this behaviour. 

Does anyone know if there is a way to force a persistent 5Ghz connection, on the GoogleTv units at least, all of the time?

Thanks
Unfortunately I am not aware of any way of disabling the 2.4GHz band or locking the Google TV to 5GHz with the Tenda kit. It's a feature I wish Tenda would implement as they do not provide the ability to separate the SSID either between the two bands. I have a similar issue with my Canon G4511 wireless printer which supports 2.4GHz only and it was a nuisance having to keep using Smart Assistant to reconnect the printer.

If the mesh node is nearby, you can get a USB C Ethernet adapter for the Chromecast and connect it to the node with an Ethernet cable.

If your main Internet router is nearby another option would be to just the 5GHz band on a higher channel such as 56 and just use this Wi-Fi SSID for the Google TV. The final option which we used for our Canon printer would be to get a separate wireless access point set up on a different 5GHz channel to the tenda and only the Google TV to it.
(06/01/2024, 06:00 PM)Seán Wrote: [ -> ]Unfortunately I am not aware of any way of disabling the 2.4GHz band or locking the Google TV to 5GHz with the Tenda kit.

Hi
Thanks for that. It's as I suspected.

However, the good news is that after finally sorting out my MW5 backhaul issues the GoogleTV units seem to latch on and maintain  5GHz  connections. It's early days, but I'm encouraged.

Previously I had pulled a couple older  wifi routers back into service to provide the main GooglTVs with a a 5GHz channel only. It was  a solution albeit a clumsy one.



Cheers
Progress Update:

It's now becoming clear to me that there must be a limit to the number of 5GHz connections Tenda MW5 software will allow. Three per node, according to my experience . Others have suggested that having Smart Assistant disabled and Capacity Oriented Mode off overcomes the limit, but that's not my experience:

Our "Den" with UDH screen/ Google TV has a node that is backhauled. If no other device is connected to that node the Google TV connects & maintains a  5GHz connection.

I note that when we have a couple of smart phones in the room that connect to the node, the phones will always connect at 5GHz and the GoogleTV will drop back to 2.4GHz. To make matters worse Google TV starts to buffer severely making watching video streams impossible.

I've gone back to providing a separate & dedicated 5GHz access point for the GoogleTV as an interim solution. A GoogleTV ethernet adaptor is on order.

NB: Information on Capacity Oriented Mode is here.




 Cheers