Smart Home Issues

[Noob73]

Looking for advice...  I have my home set up with a number of smart home devices...well dozens and dozens actually. We just got upgraded to a fibre connection this last summer and I am now on the 1G Purefibre internet plan and also have the optic TV.  After the initial hook-up, I went through a month and a half of pain and frustration, and at least 3 visits from tech support, trying to get everything working the way I thought it should.  In the end, with a hardwired connection to the Xbox and leaving the older T3200 gateway in, instead of the newer white cylindrical one (because the smart home devices found it easier to connect to the 2.4G channel when separated from the 5G channel on the T3200 and the range extenders they gave me as my house is close to 4000sqft) I was finally getting decent speeds and seemed to have everything running.  What I have noticed over the past few months is that the WIFI has become spotty or intermittent and often some of the smart home devices lose their connection.  Sometimes this is resolved with a reset of the gateway, but sometimes this means going in and reconnecting the smart home device again after resetting the gateway once/if I discover that the device has lost connection.  This has become pretty tedious and I feel like TELUS should have me on their payroll for all the time I have spent on the phone with them.  I have come to the conclusion that maybe the only way I can maintain my smart home efficiently is by purchasing a better wireless router...maybe a good mesh one... I assume that I would have to keep the TELUS gateway as a modem and to run the optic set-top TV boxes, but was looking for any advice in this regard.  Also if anyone had enough experience to recommend which router might serve me best (as a lot of the smart home devices only operate on a 2.4G channel and it is nice to have them on the same channel to help with their integration through some of the integration apps and assistants (i.e. Alexa)).

Finally, if a better router is the way to go, and anyone has experience setting a similar TELUS based network up I would be very appreciative to any helpful hints.     

[xray]

Before you go to the effort/expense of getting a new router have you tried assigning a different channel for your 2.4 GHz network? It's possible the current channel the router is using is congested (all your neighbors WiFi's on the same channel). 

[Noob73]

Not myself personally, but that has been one of the ‘fixes’ applied by TELUS in the past and while it, along with other tweaks made, do fix the issues for a period, they always seem to come back. The thought of manually changing the Wi-Fi channel regularly isn’t exactly appealing…I was hoping that a better router would potentially provide a more consistent and interruption free Wi-Fi, but I guess if Wi-Fi interference is a possible source of the problem then maybe you are right…
Is there a way to minimize Wi-Fi channel interference, or is there a router which can reconfigure the channel automatically based upon how free/uninterrupted the available channels are? My other worry is that sometimes some of the smart home devices need to be manually reconnected to the WiFI when some of related configurations change, and if that had to be done every time the WiFi channel was changed, my outlook on smart home would be drastically diminished…

[xray]

You do not need to do anything with configured devices when you change the WiFi channel. Determining the channel the client device needs to use is part of the connection process.

Unfortunately we don't have control of when our neighbours get a new router or how many they operate. If channel congestion is part of your issue then there is nothing practical you can do to prevent it. You could shield your house in a Faraday cage to block external RF but that's not practical.

Are your 5 GHz devices experiencing the same issue or is it just the 2.4 GHz ones? 

[Noob73]

Right now the 2.4 & 5 are in smart steering mode and the 5G is actually worse (more disconnections) than the 2.4G. 

Thanks for your replies by the way, I appreciate the chance to talk this through as I'm a little out of my depth.

[xray]

I recommend turning off smart steering if you have smart devices. 

See these threads:

• https://forum.telus.com/t5/Internet-Home-Phone/WiFi-to-iPhone-7-with-iOS-13-Will-Not-Stay-Connected-...
• https://forum.telus.com/t5/Internet-Home-Phone/Chromecasts-Not-Working-on-Telus-Wifi-Hub/m-p/113023
• https://forum.telus.com/t5/Internet-Home-Phone/My-Internet-Is-Slower-Since-Upgrading/m-p/103849 

[Noob73]

So I checked and the Smartsteering was actually 'off', and at the moment I checked it I was getting about 19Mbps on my 2.4G band on my 1G service...I am showing only 31 of about 40 devices connected, and it looks like it is mostly Smart Home devices that have dropped off.  Tired of the kids complaining that they can't get consistent wifi for their devices (mostly on the 5G) and tired of resetting the gateway and Boosters, I have given up fighting with the TELUS system and have now purchased an Asus XT8 Mesh system with the intent to bridge through my gateway and run all the wifi from it.  I do have some questions:

-I was intending to run my Optic TV 4K DVR box (and my one other hardwired device - an Xbox X)  from the TELUS gateway (it is currently already set up this way using MoCa adapters and the house's coaxial infrastructure).  Can I shut off the gateway's antennas and use the new router's wifi to link the 3 other wifi set top boxes to the Optik system somehow?  I'd rather not have 2 wifi networks potentially conflicting and fighting for usable channels, and I don't want to purchase 3 more MoCa adapters if I don't have to (presuming the only other option would be to hardwire them to the gateway network).

-I have in my possession both the T3200M gateway (currently being used as it has the ability to separately ID and broadcast the both bands) and the newer TELUS Hub Gateway.  I feel, but could be wrong, that the T3200M is no longer a particularly stable unit, and, although this opinion has manifested from my wifi issues, I am worried that it might also affect the connection to the internet that will be being bridged through it to the new router...not sure if that worry is even logical? In the configuration that I intend to set up, would one or other of the gateways that I have be better than the other for serving the intended purpose of providing the internet and connection for the Optic TV, and serving as a by-pass to the new router?

- Finally, as I have the TELUS Boost extenders, I was wondering if they might work with and if plugged into the Asus system to extend that systems Mesh wifi distribution even better?