I have 2 APs set up on my router running Opewnrt, operating on different bands (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). I want devices in my home to connect to the 5 GHz AP when they're close enough to the router, and use the 2.4 GHz AP only when it becomes more reliable at some distance from the router. Currently, both APs have the same distance, the farthest I need internet connection from the router, in their distance optimization field. Should I, say, halve the number for the 5 GHz AP, or did I get this feature wrong?
You should you the distance of your farthest client, in meters == x.
Where x is 100 m or greater (I've seen values less than that don't work).
Isn't that what most clients do, by default?
100 meters? I don't live in a mansion.
Yes, you're right, but clients might suck at deciding which AP to connect to when both are available at some distance from the router. I'm asking whether inputting different distance values for optimization would help.
Lower the power of the radios?
Forcing the clients to swap..
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That's the whole point of it!
Unless you really use directional antenna dishes to set up point-to-point antennas over (literally) multiple kilometres, the distance setting doesn't do anything useful for you - on the contrary, it's actively harmful unless you really know what you're doing (and really do need to cover multiple miles).
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Mansion...?
I thought you wanted the setting to work:
Don't forget that distance optimisation is not just a setting to tweak from AP to the station but also from station to AP. So a value of 100M accounts for 50m to and from both devices.
The value is "distance to the farthest client" which is one-way. That it is actually round trip time is taken into account internally. I didn't think that setting less than 2000 meters have any effect versus default. If the one-way distance is more than 2000 meters you should increase it from the default. For short links that decreases performance because the radio will needlessly wait longer for ACK packets.
Radio waves travel at the same speed regardless of the radio frequency. This setting does not depend on the frequency.
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I don't quite get the scale of it, here. I'm doing this for my home network. 2000 meters? Even 20 meters would be overkill, it's just 2 or 3 rooms away.
…and that's the gist of the responses, don't touch this setting (remove it) for a home environment - you can only mess things up for 'normal' operations.
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