Apple Extreme Airport Base Station dual bands

The router mostly fails (real world) do band steering.. in the end it's the client that picks the band.

The function called band steering on some later routers was introduced for this purpose plus a host of new IEEE standards.. but it mostly works badly or not at all.

Let me clarify what you mean.

Could you give an example?

Also confused at what one wifi network means.

Can the router discriminate the 2.4ghz WiFi or the 5ghz WiFi and have only one WiFi network to

connect via?

Are there newer dual band routers that can do the radio discrimination while having one wifi

network ?

A router that is dual band cannot produce one wifi network. It must have two or three in case of TRIBAND.

So what you mean is one SSID?? ie just one wifi network name.. but it is always two actual networks.

If you check what band steering does perhaps that can support what you want. NOTE.. it mostly does NOT work.

Smallnetbuilder has loads of tests of routers and for most that offer band steering will attempt to test how well it works.

However band steering is mostly used for roaming. For a device that is parked in one place and not moved it will seldom have issues with which band to use.

This is the start of a 4 part article that covers band steering on mesh products.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33195-wi-fi-roaming-secrets-revealed

In this case the router will choose the band .. 2.4ghz or 5ghz that a client should use.

The summary at the very top of the article.. covers most people's real world experience.

 Wi-Fi marketeers continue to promise "seamless" roaming and frustrated Wi-Fi users continue to believe them, especially when vendors promise their products use special techniques to bend Wi-Fi devices to their will.

In the end it is the device that picks the band.

Well Apple are no longer making routers.. I think returns ended up too low as Apple always dumps the low profit end.. and there was too much competition by manufacturers with big hold in router market.

Other than the Linksys Velop sold in Apple stores (via belkin who is a long time partner with Apple) they do not seem interested at all in how wireless actually works.

At some point you will need replacement. Delay as long as you can because this is an area of development.

My Asus router has band steering with or without mesh which is built in extra.

Smallnetbuilder has article on how to configure it. Since the company supplies no document support. Users must step in and provide something.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-howto/32653-asus-rt-ac3200-smart-connect-the-missing-manual

Of course I have it turned off. My motto for wireless networking is DON'T.. use ethernet!!!

The problem is for Apple to get it working you need to fiddle with a page of variables that look like this.

Since Apple routers don't give you any choices for anything but the barest min to work in a simplified world of US cable providers and mostly fail completely when faced with anywhere else in the world where they use things like vlan on wan or even just basic fibre services.

Too much support time would be gobbled up helping people to get the band steering working only to get 99% of users complaining it does not work after days and days of messing around.

Wifi in general is still voodoo.. although Apple seem to treat it as mature technology. IMHO it is more akin to medicine with beads and rattles.

Your AirPort base station broadcasts two wireless networks simultaneously, one on each band using the same network name (or SSID) for both by default.

To discriminate between bands, you just would need to change the network name for either band. That way, any wireless client can connect to either the 2.4 or 5 GHz band network.

Is that what you are asking?