Trying to decide best wifi channel to connect to wired doorbell AVD1001-100CNS

[DaveRinToronto]

Hi all. I have just installed the Arlo wired doorbell. Without thinking I connected it to our "guest" home wifi that is via a robust Google (before Nest rebranding) 3-puck mesh wifi system. I connect with an Iphone/IOS. The firmware is updated. The doorbell is at the front door of our house in a fairly dense downtown neighbourhood.

The video connection to my phone is not always great even though a puck is inside the house maybe 8 feet from the doorbell. I'm wondering if changing it to our main family wifi (however you do that, and making sure I don't lose the 3-month trial) would help. 

I read that Arlo connects to 2.4 GHZ wifi signals. The Google mesh manual tells me no account is just 2.4 or 5, it's made to automatically choose the best frequency for the device. So maybe that means switching to our main home wifi wouldn't help?

Any thoughts on switching wifi, or other ways to improve the video connection, welcome, thanks. 

Dave

[StephenB]

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@DaveRinToronto wrote:

I read that Arlo connects to 2.4 GHZ wifi signals. The Google mesh manual tells me no account is just 2.4 or 5, it's made to automatically choose the best frequency for the device.

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Most routers now (including Google Nest) are multi-band - so they will be allowing clients like the doorbell to join on 2.4.

The mesh can change wifi channels within the band any time it wants - switching from channel 6 to channel 1 for example.  But that's no problem, the doorbell will simply follow that change.

But the mesh can't force a client to switch to a different band, or even to switch to a different puck in the network. WiFi considers those to be different networks (and they are identified using a different bssid, even if the ssid/network name is the same).  The protocols the mesh uses only allow it to offer suggestions to switch to a different bssid.  The doorbell will ignore those suggestions if told to switch to 5 gHz network, because it has no 5 gHz capability.

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@DaveRinToronto wrote:

So maybe that means switching to our main home wifi wouldn't help?

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The only way to know for sure would be to try it.  You shouldn't lose your trial subscription by doing that.

[DaveRinToronto]

Thanks for the replys. Finally got a chance to go back to this, since I wrote the request for help my Arlo has started going offline repeatedly. I'm doing a factory reset and attaching it to our main wifi. Fingers crossed otherwise I have to take it back.