If your home is a wireless warzone then automatically shifting gadgets between bands, in search of the best performance, might create as many problems as it solves.

Home WiFi troubleshooting is a dark art because there are so many things which can play havoc with your wireless network. Rather than simply boosting the signal, many new WiFi routers employ networking tricks to improve your wireless coverage – but it's important to read the fine print.

These days most home WiFi routers are dual-band base stations, meaning they can run 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless networks side by side. While 5GHz networks are faster and less prone to interference, 2.4GHz signals reach further and do a better job of punching through solid objects like walls – so it's handy to have both bands at your disposal.

One approach is to run your 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks as completely separate WiFi networks, with different names, and decide which of your devices should connect to which network. As a general rule you'd put streaming devices like wireless speakers and video players on your faster 5GHz network, particularly if your microwave oven tends to play havoc with your 2.4 GHz network as it does in my house.

Of course this creates a challenge for devices which move around your home, such as the smartphone in your pocket as well as your notebooks and tablets.

Put your smartphone on the 2.4GHz network and you're taking a speed hit while leaving it vulnerable to wireless interference. Put it on the 5GHz network and the phone might struggle to get a decent signal at the far end of the house. Give your phone the password to both networks and you might find that it sometimes favours the 2.4GHz network even when the 5GHz network offers a stronger signal.

This is where bandsteering can come to your rescue, letting your WiFi router automatically shift your devices between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands depending on which is offering the best performance in that location. As you walk away from the wireless router to the other end of the house you switch from fast 5GHz to reliable 2.4GHz, then back again as you return.

For bandsteering to work you need to allocate the same name and password to both networks. It's built into many high-end routers like my FritzBox 7490, along with the new generation of mesh WiFi networks – it's an option with the Linksys Velop gear and mandatory with Google WiFi.

Bandsteering is great in theory, but unfortunately consumer-grade gear doesn't tend to offer a lot of granular control – such as adjusting the threshold point for switching between bands and locking some devices to one band.

As a result, bandsteering might be too heavy-handed when it comes to pushing your devices across to the 2.4GHz band even though they were making do with 5GHz. Wireless speakers which were getting by on a weak 5GHz signal can suddenly find themselves on the supposedly better 2.4GHz network which means your music craps out during pre-dinner drinks when you're using the microwave.

Like all WiFi troubleshooting, it takes some trial and error to decide whether bandsteering is the right choice for your home. Upgrading to a mesh WiFi network should help, as placing several WiFi hotspots around the home will reduce the likelihood of your 5GHz-compatible devices switching across to 2.4GHz. Alternatively you might decide it's easier to run a third 5GHz-only network for your streaming devices, perhaps using your router's Guest network (although this might be limited to 2.4GHz).

How do you cope with WiFi issues in your home? Has bandsteering saved the day?