[Fungusfriend]

If two devices are connected to the same wireless network but on different bands (whether they're both 5GHz or one of them is 2.4GHz), should they be able to connect to each other?

 

I've got this Tri-band router with Smart Connect:

https://smile.amazon...duct/B00S9SGNNS

 

I assumed I could connect devices to each other through Smart Connect, but I've run into a problem this morning. (Smart Connect means that all wireless devices connect to the same SSID and the router automatically connects them via one of the three bands.) My Roku device and my Android phone are both connected to the WiFi network, but I can't connect the Android device to the Roku. The Roku app on my Android says the device is not responding. I was using the Android as a remote for the Roku stick yesterday, so I think what happened is the router put the Roku and the Android on different bands, and now they can't connect. I'm looking to find out whether that's a good assumption and whether I can somehow set up Smart Connect to avoid the problem, or whether I need to disable Smart Connect and connect devices to specific bands so they can communicate.

 

Please don't get too caught up in the details of my specific problem and try to troubleshoot. What I really want is information about how wireless bands work and how I can get them to work together.

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The router should be transparent to the devices regardless of which band they are assigned.  Not much point in Smart Connect if they can't talk between bands.  Did you log on to the router and see if it sees Roku and Android as being connected?  From their website:

 

The user-friendly web portal allows you to see which devices are

on each band at any point in time and manually move to whichever band you perfer.

 

 

 

The user-friendly web portal allows you to see which devices are
on each band at any point in time and manually move to whichever band you perfer.

[RKinner]

The router should be transparent to the devices regardless of which band they are assigned.  Not much point in Smart Connect if they can't talk between bands.  Did you log on to the router and see if it sees Roku and Android as being connected?  From their website:

 

The user-friendly web portal allows you to see which devices are

on each band at any point in time and manually move to whichever band you perfer.

 

 

 

The user-friendly web portal allows you to see which devices are
on each band at any point in time and manually move to whichever band you perfer.

[dsenette]

i agree with RKinner. the "wireless" part of WIFI is just a transmission media. it doesn't specifically effect what the connected device can/can't see once connected. it's POSSIBLE that the router is segregating the different bands into different networks for security purposes (which is a thing that can be done. like 2.4ghz devices can't talk to 5ghz devices), so maybe there's a setting in the router that is assigning different addresses to each band. you SHOULD be able to see the IP addresses assigned to each device, both on the device and the router.