Your old router is the secret to a stable smart home

Modern smart homes with 30+ Wi-Fi devices often suffer from congestion and security issues because consumer routers struggle to handle so many simultaneous connections. Repurposing an old router as a dedicated IoT subnetwork solves both problems: it offloads chatty 2.4 GHz smart devices onto their own network segment, freeing up 5 GHz/6 GHz bands for high-performance devices, and creates network isolation that shields your main network from insecure IoT gadgets. Setup involves disabling DHCP on the old router, assigning it a static LAN IP outside the main router's DHCP pool, and connecting it LAN-to-LAN to act as a wireless access point and switch.