Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but currently a the router can offer more than one Wi-Fi network. These networks operate at different frequencies and of course have quite different characteristics. Well, it is quite common for users to connect without looking and this leads them to abuse WiFi.
Before you connect to WiFi, you should know this
For you to understand better, currently the WiFi 5 and 6 routers offer two frequency bands: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Also we can have a 6E wifi routerwhich is an enhancement of the WiFi 6 standard, which adds the 6.0 GHz band.
the band of 2.4 GHz was developed in 1999 for connecting to the Internet without the need for cables in domestic environments. Currently, all routers continue to offer this connection band, since there are still many devices that are only compatible with this frequency.
Until the advent of WiFi 5, the 5 GHz band was little used in the domestic sphere. Many routers, despite their power, did not offer support for this band before the arrival of WiFi 5. But, believe it or not, the band of 5 GHz was also developed in 1999although he has not started adopt massively until 2014.
Now which one should I use and why? Well, the band 5GHz offers faster connections that the band of 2.4GHz. This results in reduced loading times, which is especially important in games where latency or ping matter a lot.
But, now comes the bad part of it and that’s cover. the band of 5GHz makes use of shorter waves for the data transmission. This makes the signal attenuation when there are wallsfor example, is higher than the 2.4 GHz band. For this reason, the 2.4 GHz band provides better coverage than the 5 GHz band when there are more obstructions, such as walls.
When should I connect to either WiFi band?
All routers, unless we disable it, natively offer both active bands. The 5 GHz band is easily detectable, as it is usually identified by the network name followed by “_5G”. This tells us that we are connected to the WiFi network on the 5 GHz frequency.
In fact, there are few cases where we need a 5 GHz connection. The first and most obvious case is when we play, because we need a high-speed, low-latency connection. This is also the connection we would use if we wanted transfer large filesreducing transfer times.
Since smartphone we can use the 2.4GHz red if the 5 GHz coverage is not very good, you will hardly notice the difference. The Smart-TV You can also connect to 2.4GHz with no problem, that shouldn’t be a big change either. It is also the ideal strip for devices such as smart plugs, lights or cameras, among others.
The reality is that connecting to either band of our WiFi network is usually pretty indistinguishable. This will be noticeable in games and heavy file transfers, but nothing else. So if you have a weak WiFi connection in the living room, since the signal from the router has to pass through several walls, you should still switch to the 2.4 GHz band, because you will have better coverage (theoretically).
