Some Restrictions on Wi-Fi 2.4 Band
Few months back, I created a dedicated SSID for my 2.4 GHz band and another separate SSID for the 5 GHz. From time to time, my wife says that there are some sites not accessible on 2.4 SSID but when she connects to our 5GHz SSID, she can access that particular site. Recently, my son told me that he can't install anything in Play Store. It's just saying "no Internet", and when I moved his connection to the 5GHz SSID, he was able to access Play Store just fine.
As far as I know, everything you set in the Firewalla "Rules" should be applicable to all devices regardless which SSID they connect to, right? My Gold is running on router mode, with a couple of APs connected. No VLAN or any kind of segmentation within my network.
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Firewalla doesn't know anything about SSID, so it really does not matter which band your devices are on, your traffic should be controlled by the firewalla.
If you are encountering issues with access issues, please see this article https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050255274-What-to-do-when-you-can-t-access-certain-websites-
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seems that your problem was based of the APs.
May i ask why you are using seperated SSIDs for 2.4 and 5 GHz? I'm using unifi and don't have problems when using one SSID with both frequencies. Unifi switches automatically between both frequencies and also between other APs. Always the best way will be done automatically. When i move from room to room, first is the switch from 5 GHz to 2.4 GHz and then switch to other AP when in range. And if it's close to the phone, it'll switch automatically back to 5 GHz without interruption.
Actually i thought your problem could be, each SSID will have virtual ethernet ports with different IP-settings. maybe some setting was not correct at that time and the gateway could not be found. Or you accidentially use the new device quaranteen and one of these virtual devices (with 2.4 GHz) was in quaranreen?
Or sth was disturbing your 2.4 GHz band, microwave e. g. or sth else. Maybe this could be the answer, when the problem disappears suddenly.
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The reason why I was using separate SSIDs is because as much as possible I want to dedicate the 2.4 to my devices that are not capable of having dual-band connection, just like most of my IoT devices.
The issue I'm having doesn't look be more of connectivity between the hosts and APs because, for example, when browsing, there are only a couple of sites that are not accessible and the rest works just fine. Once we switch to 5Ghz and refresh the page, it will be accessible right away.
But I think this issue is already resolved. I don't notice this issue anymore after I power cycled my FWG. Not sure what really was the root cause.
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i'm also using devices like IoT, which can't use 5 GHz. But there's no problem to use them with mixed mode 2,4 and 5 GHz in my unifi network.
Another posibility is to use seperated SSID with seperated VLAN. But actually i didn't set up this yet, especially i'm only using firewalla blue which can only use one LAN / VLAN.
but for compatibility reasons it's not needed to use seperated SSID for both frequencies. Otherwise the user should switch between them manually.
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