XB10 (fw 8.6p4s4): 6 GHz → 5 GHz band steering leaves Wi-Fi 7 Apple devices connected with no traffic

Setup: XB10 (CGM601TCOM, HW 3.2), firmware CGM601TCOM_8.6p4s4_PROD_sey. Gigabit plan, one network name across 2.4/5/6 GHz, Xfinity extender paired (so I can't split bands).

Affected: three Wi-Fi 7 Apple devices: a MacBook (macOS 27.2), an iPhone 17 Pro Max and an iPhone 16 Pro. Other devices on 2.4/5 GHz are fine.

Symptom: several times a day a device stays "connected" with full bars, but nothing loads until I manually reconnect.

What the Mac's Wi-Fi logs show (about 14 hours):

- The gateway repeatedly sends an 802.11v steering request ("Steer to Preferred Channel 157", 5 GHz) while the Mac is on 6 GHz channel 69, even with a strong 6 GHz signal (-41 to -55 dBm).

- 4 of 13 gateway-initiated 6 → 5 GHz steers left the Mac associated but cut off: ARP to the gateway unanswered and DHCP "server not responding", for 2–6 minutes until a manual reconnect.

- During those periods the radio link was fine (every transmitted frame was acknowledged, beacons kept arriving), but the Mac couldn't use what it received: block-ack reorder holes went from 0 to 100–680 per 5 seconds, receive error rate rose to 40–70%, and zero packets reached the OS. A full reconnect clears it instantly.

- None of the 11 roams the Mac made on its own (5 → 6 GHz) failed. Failures only follow gateway-initiated steering.

- The gateway's own spectrum scan shows 0 neighbors on its 6 GHz channel and about 50 overlapping networks on 5 GHz channel 157, so each steer also moves the device to a much worse channel.

- The cable signal is clean (downstream SNR about 47 dB), so this is between the devices and the gateway.

Requests:

1. Can band/client steering be disabled, or the 6 → 5 GHz steering behavior changed, for my gateway?

2. Is there newer CGM601TCOM firmware that addresses this, and can it be pushed to my gateway?

• 3. If neither, please escalate to the XB10 Wi-Fi engineering team. I can provide full logs.