Enhanced IoT Connectivity within UniFi is a recent addition to the application, but lets find out what it actually does.

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There is plenty of things you can do in order to provide a more stable and reliable connection for your various WiFi based IoT devices. We have a full guide on our support centre explaining everything you can do.

What does Enhanced IoT Connectivity do?

Enhanced IoT Connectivity is a one click option which can be found under each SSID within the UniFi application. It is designed to improve connectivity for various IoT devices.

Ubiquiti says this feature does the following:

1. Optimizing beacons by removing unnecessary data
2. Switching to WPA2 encryption for better compatibility
3. Disabling advanced WiFi features that IoT devices don’t use

Regarding number three, it isn't clear what features this is disabling. We tested to find out and it turns off the following features:

• Band Steering - This makes sense as this feature is designed to help move clients from 2.4GHz to 5GHz. However, since IoT device networks generally only run on 2.4GHz SSIDs, this feature doesn't need to be enabled. Also, IoT devices don't generally move about, like a phone.

• BSS Transition - This essentially enables 802.11v, which allows the APs to send information out to clients about the other APs they can roam to in the vicinity. Since IoT devices are not generally going to move around, this can be disabled. Also, some IoT devices don't even have the software to be able to handle 802.11v, so this may cause issues if left enabled.

• Fast Roaming - This enables 802.11r and may cause issues for IoT devices. This allows for much faster roaming between APs, if clients support it.

• 5GHz - If you have one single SSID with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz enabled for IoT devices, this can cause issues when those clients that do support both are switching bands. Most IoT devices are 2.4GHz only.