Router with semi-simultaneous 802.11g/n/ac

[Pandamonium]

I know that in general a network defaults to the lowest common denominator. But is there a term or tech that designates routers that can auto negotiate back up quickly?

ie: ps3, wii, wireless printer are 802.11g. Obviously they're not all in use all the time. The rest of my stuff is 802.11n or ac. What term or spec do I need to search for to know that the router will throttle down to 802.11g when one of those devices is active and then revert to 2.4ghz 802.11n/5ghz 802.11ac?

 

[JackMDS]

Get a new 802.11ac Wireless Router and keep the old one connected as an Access Point.

You will have the flexibility to separate Bands till as you will and all together you will have more Wireless bandwidth.

Using Wireless Cable/DSL Routers (or Modem/Wireless Router) as a Switch with an Access Point - http://www.ezlan.net/router_AP.html

Wireless to channel 1 and the new to channel 11.

Example:

You can set the old Wireless to do b/g/n, and new Wireless to do only a/n (or whatever other combo suits you).

Security should be the same, or whatever is needed for your specific Wireless devices.

 

[azazel1024]

There is no such thing as auto negotiating back and forth. Not really. The router will talk 11g to the 11g devices, 11n to the 11n devices and 11ac to the 11ac devices. It'll time share between them though. It depends heavily on the router firmware and settings, but if you had 3 devices, it might decide to airshare evenly between the 3.

That means an 11g device would get 1/3rd of its through put, the 11n would get 1/3rd and the 11ac would get 1/3rd.

Though from what I have seen/heard, the presence of 11g clients will typically slow down your wireless network a bit more than you'd expect and 11n on 11ac doesn't pay quite as big a penalty. I think it has a lot to do with some of the legacy handling that 11g requires over 11n/ac.

I have seen little to no testing with mixed clients on a per router basis. I HAVE seen mixed client testing though.

So you are probably up a creek if you want to try to compare router performance based on a mixed client environment since that is not a typical benchmark for router reviews.

Other than that, Jack's suggestion is your best option. Set the existing one to handle b/g clients and set the new one to handle the a/n/ac clients. Just set different 2.4GHz channels and different SSIDs and go from there.

 

[Pandamonium]

Any idea if this works with UniFi in play? I'm in the middle of a wiring project to get reliable wireless at home. Turns out all the walls are plaster over metal over wood lathe. (At least on a few test walls) So long story short, I need multiple APs anyway, and I'd like seamless roaming since I'll have to roam a lot more than you'd expect.