MLO WIFI 7

[supershaun]

Okay so I recently purchased the Asus GT-BE98 and am wondering if I should have the 2.4GHZ,5GHZ x2 & 6GHZ with one wifi name and then setup MLO to use a different wifi name. Would this work or not? And would it benefit in anyway?

thanks

[jzchen]

I'm not sure but MLO seems to enforce combining all four channels AND SmartConnecting them.  I'm afraid it's not as customizable as I had hoped (on my BE98 Pro).  Because my Internet service is 1 Gbps (fiber), I ended up turning off MLO, and leaving WiFi 7 ON for one 6 GHz channel to enable 320 MHz bandwidth.  I disabled WiFi 7 on 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels.

[supershaun]

Okay thanks for the reply. I have wifi 7 active on all 3 frequencies. Is it best to turn off for the 2.4GHZ & 5GHZ?

[jzchen]

I based my decision on the fact that I only have one WiFi 7 OnePlus Open phone, and it runs faster when connected to (new to me) RT-AX5400 than when connected to the BE98 Pro, WiFi 7, MLO on, or not.  The rest of 40ish devices are WiFi 6 or below, and only a single WiFi 6E.  So it depends on what works best for your situation...

[Saltgrass]

@jzchen  Some of the problems you are seeing may be due to your Mesh nodes not being MLO compliant.  This is the main reason I chose to continue with a second GT-BE98 Pro.

[jzchen]

When set up MLO is a separate SSID compared to Legacy as you note.  So I simply connect my phone directly to the SSID_MLO and speed test.  I can compare with how it performs with a TP-Link Deco BE95 which with updated firmware only combines 5 GHz and 6 GHz-1.  When comparing performance the phone performs from best to worst:  non-MLO RT-AX5400 > TP-Link MLO > BE98 Pro MLO.  I have no doubt that something is fishy on OnePlus' implementation of WiFi 7 MLO, and Samsung performance has been shared here with us, but I just have to conform the configuration based on the majority of devices.  (It has been very poor/annoyingly, and I'm pretty patient I believe).

Still trying to source a ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro single unit to hopefully better things.  (Also got a phone Android update within the last couple of days but I have an important/last final for summer session tomorrow night I'm trying to avoid distractions as much as possible, so haven't tested whether things are better...)

[jzchen]

I forgot if you have MLO turned on it asks for a Legacy IoT SSID,  so you can use that for your non-WiFi 7 devices.  I just didn't want to tie up all that bandwidth for a single WiFi 7 phone, which doesn't even perform well on it per speed test...

[Saltgrass]

I have mine setup as you appear to have.  A basic primary SSID plus an MLO version along with the IoT SSID that was created during setting up MLO.

MLO can help in several ways, and one is if you have a mobile device and move around your area with it.  If you just had the one router, if you watch the phone, it may be using 6GHz and one other when close to the router, but as you move away, it may lose the 6 GHz because of the shorter range and pick up the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz.  

If you go further, you may be left with only the 2.4 GHz since it has the longest range.   This may be modified by the layout of your area and any blocking type components, such as a hot water heater or fish tank.

The primary function is to maintain at least two working radios to preclude a call being dropped by losing just one radio.