AC only means a STA must support 802.11ac to trigger steering.ALL (default) means any type of STA can trigger steering.This controls determines how 802.11ac and non-ac STAs are handled. These contols determine STA link rates that trigger band steering. The purpose of this article is to document what the Smart connect controls do and offer insight into how they work so that users can intelligently tune them to their needs. We also found in our own testing that Smart Connect made very odd choices in assigning STAs. But ASUS seems to have started out too aggressively with Smart Connect, because many users have reported frequent disconnects as clients are shuffled among radios. in response to changing conditions, and also between bands. The default settings steer clients dynamically, i.e. Linksys’ implementation dynamically steers clients between the two 5 GHz radios only.ĪSUS has configured the most aggressive Smart Connect implentation yet. NETGEAR doesn’t do any dynamic band steering on the R8000 and doesn’t steer STAs between 2.4 and 5 GHz. NETGEAR’s R8000 Nighthawk X6 and Linksys’ EA9200 both let you only turn Smart Connect on and off.

See this article for more info on Smart Connect.)ĪSUS is the first to expose Smart Connect controls to users. It is intended to automatically steer clients to one of three radios (one 2.4 GHz, one low-band 5 GHz, one high-band 5 GHz) to maximize total wireless throughput use. To recap, Smart Connect is part of Broadcom’s XStream technology that’s at the heart of all AC3200 class routers. (They’re intended for developers only.) ASUS said work on its Smart Connect documentation is underway, but with no estimated availability. Broadcom responded with excerpts from a 47XX_53XX Applications note that were very helpful in preparing this article, but are by no means user friendly. But since you spent all that money for a router that’s supposed to automatically arrange client connections to maximize total bandwidth, don’t you want to use it?īefore writing this, I asked both ASUS and Broadcom for help. As a result, many buyers have experiencing frequent client disconnects and have disabled Smart Connect to keep everything connected. And to make matters worse, ASUS provided no documentation for them. ASUS made a bold (and perhaps foolish) move by exposing a large set of controls for the Smart Connect feature in its RT-AC3200 router.

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