UniFi has had the option of Band Steering within the WiFi settings for many years, but let's find out what it actually does.

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What does Band Steering do?

Band Steering is one of many settings in the WiFi section of UniFi that attempts to help ease network congestion by encouraging WiFi clients to move from 2.4GHz to 5GHz. 5GHz has, on paper, better performance and less interference than 2.4GHz, while 2.4GHz has better propagation. Enabling Band Steering can have some downsides such as clients sticking on 2.4GHz and roaming issues.

Should You Enable Band Steering?

Generally, no. It is advised to leave Band Steering disabled and design a network where a client can decide on its own which AP or band to connect to. Pretty much all modern WiFi clients that support Basic Service Set (BSS), will be able to decide for itself which AP or band is the most suitable.

However, in some use cases and deployments, you might find that enabling Band Steering can have some positive outcomes.

When a device is connected to an SSID that is apart of a BSS group, each client will have its own threshold it reaches when it starts looking for other APs nearby. For example, with Apple devices, this is -65dBm, but might be different for other devices.

Instead of using Band Steering, you can do things like making sure APs are in better locations, turning down the output power or even turning of 2.4GHz on some APs, if required.

The best way to really control and guarantee roaming and signal levels is to create a separate network for each band, or simply use 5GHz for important clients and leave 2.4GHz for specific use cases, such as IoT.