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RCBH928
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Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by RCBH928 Sat Jun 29, 2019 6:14 am

Looking for higher speeds and improving my Wifi I played around with this, I enabled it on my router. People seem to be super happy with it, but with my testing I found it to have buffering and latency issues, sometimes you need to reload websites. It can not be my router, because my router is one of the best reviewed ones out there, the Netgear r7000. It also has a weird behaviour where on 2.4Ghz, website loading bar correlates to the downloaded content.. On 5Ghz it seems to load 10%, get stuck for sometime then -BOOM-the whole website is loaded.

I did stopwatch tests, so I know for fact when I am on 5Ghz its slower. I also did various speed tests, and noticed no gain over 2.4Ghz maybe worse. How was your experience?
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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by Ziggy587 Sat Jun 29, 2019 8:09 am

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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by isiolia Sat Jun 29, 2019 4:37 pm

I use it on mine and on others at work (I have a version of the same router you have in my office). It's usually a good bit faster. Obviously, if you're looking at web content to compare, that may also be an issue with your internet connection or the web site itself.

You may just want to double check other pieces. Update the router firmware, test with ethernet, that sort of thing. Check Windows logs to see if your adapter is having other issues (I had one in a laptop that was stopping/restarting very frequently, slowing wireless down).
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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by pierrot Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:27 pm

How far away from the Wi-Fi radio are you when you're connecting?

Those 2.4 GHz, and 5 GHz terms aren't really bandwidths. They're essentially the primary frequency in the modulated band spectrum. The channels available subdivide that band into a bunch of carrier frequencies for data transmission near that primary frequency. In the case of 900 MHz transmissions, the band is ~900 MHz to ~930 MHz. So the part that becomes an issue is wavelength. At higher frequencies, the wavelength becomes smaller. This means more 'data cycles,' or packets, are transmitted in the same amount of time, but shorter wavelengths (higher frequencies) reflect off of objects more than longer wavelength signals (lower frequencies), giving worse signal penetration. You have to weigh those things when implementing a radio transceiver. You'll usually get a wider transmit radius from a lower sideband frequency, but the transmit speed will usually be slower. You won't be able to exceed the data rates from your provider, just from switching to 5 GHz, though.
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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by marurun Sat Jun 29, 2019 11:24 pm

In layman’s terms, 5 ghz has a log more trouble with walls are barriers and thus typically exhibits poorer range inside buildings with lots of walls and floors and rooms. 2.4 ghz may be slower, but it will likely get you better range. Another thing to check is to make sure you’re not nearby lots of other wireless systems on the same channel. Interference is a bitch.
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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by RCBH928 Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:51 am

I checked all channels, seems like same result.
So everyone here had better experience using 5Ghz? Maybe its my ISP.

isiolia wrote:I use it on mine and on others at work (I have a version of the same router you have in my office). It's usually a good bit faster. Obviously, if you're looking at web content to compare, that may also be an issue with your internet connection or the web site itself.

You may just want to double check other pieces. Update the router firmware, test with ethernet, that sort of thing. Check Windows logs to see if your adapter is having other issues (I had one in a laptop that was stopping/restarting very frequently, slowing wireless down).


I am only like 4 steps away from the router but there is a wooden door and a cement wall in between. What do you mean by adapter? Internal modem?
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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by Jagosaurus Sun Jun 30, 2019 5:29 pm

Likely cement wall impacting it. As they mentioned 5Ghz doesn't play well with barriers.

I've been involved with many wireless deployments. We had to change to 2.4Ghz around steel doors, high warehouse shelving, & you guessed it.... cinderblock/cement walls.

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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by Ziggy587 Sun Jun 30, 2019 6:21 pm

RCBH928 wrote:I am only like 4 steps away from the router but there is a wooden door and a cement wall in between.


I'm assuming there must be a reason, but, why not hardwire if you're so close?
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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by RCBH928 Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:09 am

Jagosaurus wrote:Likely cement wall impacting it. As they mentioned 5Ghz doesn't play well with barriers.

I've been involved with many wireless deployments. We had to change to 2.4Ghz around steel doors, high warehouse shelving, & you guessed it.... cinderblock/cement walls.


I guess 5Ghz is for drywalls only...
I wonder how they will get new 5G cell towers around the cities working...

Ziggy587 wrote:
RCBH928 wrote:I am only like 4 steps away from the router but there is a wooden door and a cement wall in between.


I'm assuming there must be a reason, but, why not hardwire if you're so close?


You can't hardwire everything, iPads, smartphones, etc. Also I use a laptop that I move around. There is also no way to make the wires pass through the door or the cement walls without drilling. There is no nice way of running the wires around the room(s).

Given how everything is internet connected now days, future homes need ethernet sockets in every room just like we have electric sockets. Then again, you never know what new technology will come out obsoleting your installed "IT infrastructure" .
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Re: Do you use the 5Ghz spectrum on your router?

by Anapan Mon Jul 01, 2019 3:20 am

I use 5G. In my testing it does only slightly better than 2.4g in any situation (and many devices can't use it) It's not interfering in my tests, just not effective so nearly unnecessary. The building's physical limits and signal noise on nearly all channels made it necessary to set up a couple of wired-to-wireless bridges. Luckily they are cheap from China. I've taken to using the cheapest, smallest ethernet switches I can find and Vonets sender and receiver bridges to the perimeter areas of the property. Very cheap, and very effective between buildings if you set up the ethernet connected wireless devices with visible connection to the outer receiver. Minimal setup as switches work out-of-the-box and the ethernet to wifi bridges, when set up do well at returning my local network to ethernet on the receiving end. I read this is less than half bandwidth after all the handshakes, but I mostly only stream music youtube out there anyway.

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