What Is Band Steering? How It Helps Get Good Wi-Fi Connectivity?

Broadband internet has become a common thing in many Indian households these days. With the increase in the number of gadgets used by people, there is a demand for uninterrupted connectivity to meet all the data requirements of users. Understanding this, broadband connections offer data speeds of up to 1Gbps in the country.

While broadband internet has become common, it is quite important to know a few aspects such as factors to consider while choosing a wireless router. Now, we have detailed another term - band steering that comes to play in utilizing the Wi-Fi networks in the best possible manner. For the uninitiated, every modern router comes with band steering technology and here we detail this tech and how to use it to get the most use of your Wi-Fi connection.

What Is Band Steering?

To help you understand, band steering is a technique that will make your router connect the old devices supporting 2.4GHz networks as well as the new devices with ultra-fast 5GHz network support to the internet. Notably, band steering is possible only on routers that support dual-band Wi-Fi. If the router lacks this support, then it cannot support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

Mostly, the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks will be supported by old devices. This is where band steering helps the router to intelligently connect to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks. To do this, you do not have to connect both the networks manually. Based on the capability of each of these devices, the router will direct the respective network band towards it. This way, both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks will be divided by the router among your devices intelligently to avoid network congestion resulting in poor connectivity.

Why Should You Buy Dual-Band Routers?

These days, people use many devices that require an internet connection to function as intended. With the onset of smart home products including smart speakers, set-top boxes and more, there is a never-seen-before internet requirement among users right now. Given that people are heading towards the use of IoT devices such as smart bulbs and more that also connect to the same Wi-Fi network, there will be increased congestion on the internet experience.

This is where the band steering capability comes to play in helping ease the congestion on the network. It is for this reason that buying dual-band Wi-Fi routers are advised. With these routers, users can control the network band they want their device to connect to. The network band can be changed manually depending on their preference to get the most out of Wi-Fi networks.