Need help with getting a 2.4Ghz signal on Comcast/Xfinity Gateway modem.

Krieger

Member
Ugh, it is a real struggle trying to figure this out. The settings for this are useless in both the website & app. Comcast/Xfinity seems to have made it impossible to create a 2.4Ghz wifi signal band for no good reason. I'm trying to get a few smart devices to work but they all require a 2.4Ghz wifi signal which I can understand because of hardware limitations but Comcast/Xfinity really didn't need to completely phase out the 2.4Ghz band rendering nearly all smart devices useless on their wifi. Now it looks like I'm resorting to getting a 2.4Ghz adapter. Does anyone have advice on hardware or other tricks/hacks on how to get a 2.4Ghz band out of a 5Ghz modem?
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
The router you have is exclusively 5GHz? I find that a little hard to believe but maybe so. What model? A ton of devices still use 2.4GHz, and it has much better range (albeit slower speeds). I would suspect that it just is broadcasting 2.4 and 5GHz both under one SSID and automatically picks based which frequency based on the device. Do your 2.4GHz devices just not see it at all?
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
As above, which model of device? Most of the time they are listed as b/g/n as the 2.4 band, but I haven't specifically used an xfinity gateway and instead just used my own gear for a long time. The latest ATT one with 802.11ax lets you independently roll each band pretty easily, but we can help you with some more info.

Also, buying a '2.4 ghz adapter' sounds a bit funky, what's your actual plan with that?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
I have a client that has one of their gateways and it only shows 1 SSID for wifi. I hope to go over their today to replace it with a Motorola one. I'll access the modem and see how that is setup and get back to you. I have a feeling one of the bands are disabled for some reason.
 

Krieger

Member
I think Comcast/Xfinity setup their new Gateway modems this way to get people to buy these wifi booster pods because they only run on 5Ghz & recommend them on their settings page when I try to look up how to configure a 2.4Ghz signal band. Booster pods are overpriced because I can just as easily get a TP link that does the same thing with more options for 4 times less the cost. For now I'm going to give this bluetooth wifi adapter I came across a try which has a dual band function & it was oly $15.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You need to go in and separate the SSID's for the 2.4 and 5ghz networks. I was finally at my clients that had the comcast gateway and thats what it was. Each band was the same SSID and some devices were having problems connecting because of it. Once you rename one of them, issue should be solved.
 

Krieger

Member
You need to go in and separate the SSID's for the 2.4 and 5ghz networks. I was finally at my clients that had the comcast gateway and thats what it was. Each band was the same SSID and some devices were having problems connecting because of it. Once you rename one of them, issue should be solved.
Ok, I'll give that a try when I get around to it. For now I ended up having to return the bluetooth wifi adapter because it was having driver problems that could not be fixed which had me thinking its hardware may be defective. I ended up getting a wireless TP link since the wifi half of our house sucks anyways. So if push comes to shove & configuring the Gateway modem to a 2.4Ghz band is not possible at least the TP link will be dual band with 2.4Gz & 5Ghz by default. I was able to get a few smart devices to work on the 5Ghz band the Gateway modem provides so I'm thinking it is the SSID as you have discovered which makes it damn near impossible to setup smart devices.
 

Krieger

Member
So I got the 2.4Ghz band separated from the 5Ghz band on my Gateway modem. That seems to have done the trick. Had to skim through a bunch of settings in the Xfi site. The connections for most of my smart devices seems allot more stable now. Having a bit of an issue with one of my smart outlets but I'm sure I'll just have to renitilizerenitilize it in the app.
 
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