The problem with 5Ghz is that it doesn't go through walls very well compared to 2.4Ghz, resulting in APs having less range (or having to use several times more power)
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Until I can get a decent 5Ghz signal on the other side of a wall from the router, I can't do without 2.4Ghz.
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Here's the thing. There are still plenty of devices that only have 2.4Ghz radios. There's some cheaper stuff still made today with just 2.4Ghz. So you'd just cut out a load of devices from working straight out. This kind of thing needs to be done slowly. 3G was very different because phone makers generally always want the more modern technology and phones that didn't have radios capable of 4g or better really are just rare now.
But, there's also just no reason to. Have 2.4Ghz available doesn't hurt you, if you're not using it. Any chipset with 5Ghz is not costing more to also support 2.4. They're just all pretty much single chip solutions these days and the aerial is usually just a coil on the board somewhere. If your device works on 5Ghz it will use 5Ghz.
I'd also argue in real terms 5Ghz isn't much better than 2.4Ghz in terms of channel space in places that need to respect DFS rules you generally only get one 80Mhz channel that will definitely work, and if you're using 802.11ax 80Mhz is really the minimum you want to get even remotely close to the advertised rate. Everything else useful is either DFS or limited power (at least here in the UK, and I don't recall seeing the limited power channel as an option). Now, I've generally setup two wifi APs in my house, one on the only non DFS channel, and the other on a DFS channel. That way if the DFS channel gets knocked out there's a fallback to the already congested "main" 5Ghz channel.
I think the main point is, why remove something that doesn't really affect you but may well affect others?
For residential space sure. For campus deployments, 2.4 is really helpful to get coverage in places you couldn't justify additional antennas, or to blanket outdoor spaces between buildings. When you manage 10s of thousands of WAPs, in all sorts of crazy buildings and locations, you need every tool you can get.
Two words: Backward Compatibility
Edit: I am actually really surprised at how unpopular this opinion appears to be.
2.4Ghz WiFi works perfectly for me, possibly because I'm not using an "OEM" access point - but rather went out and spent a couple hundred dollars on a good one myself. Both at home in the suburbs and at our office in the city with several businesses in one building, 2.4Ghz works great.
In my experience 5Ghz only has acceptable performance if you have an access point in every internal room. I have zero interest in setting that up and like the fact that I can have reliable internet on my entire suburban block with a single (good) access point.
"Upgrading" to 5Ghz would mean replacing one access point with eight access points. No thanks.
As for wanting 400mbps... wtf for? I have a 10Gbps connection (wired) at the office and 50Mbps (wifi, 2.4Ghz) at home. Honestly can't tell the difference. Sure, large downloads are faster... but that's not something I do often especially at home. And if I did want that, I wouldn't be using wireless. Latency is far more important than bandwidth and wired has better latency.
It is always amazing how many people think their own specific situation should be used as the defining standard for the rest of the world.
5 ghz just doesn't get through stucco, concrete or even an inconveniently located furnace very well, nor does it reach nearly as far as a 2.4 ghz signal when only drywall and wooden studs are in the way. It would take 5 AP's at 5ghz to cover the same area as 2 at 2.4 ghz in my environment.
The great thing is that you can disable 2.4 ghz wifi on all your devices and the rest of us can continue to do what works for us.
I did specifically mention either removing it entirely OR disabling it by default.
So the rest of the world should change for your convenience. Got it.
Slightly less crap take: open 2.5Ghz https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/broadband-division/broadband-radio-service-education-broadband-service for wifi data usage only, instead of the ffa on 2.4
At least here in the United States. That's being used by T-Mobile.
Wifi for rural services should be replaced with cellular connections. Let's pivot
I’d rather not outsource my network infrastructure.
You mean like fixed wireless access? Because T-Mobile does that. And in my previous house that was very rural, it worked very well. I was able to get 100 megabits a second over the cellular network where my neighbors were only getting 10 megabits per second on DSL. And that's all that was available.
Sorta, there's a point to point frequency already were you using 4g+/5g for that previous one? Or was it the 2.5Ghz spectrum that the original doc I listed was using?
Either way, talk of 6g is already here. Let's reassign 2.5Ghz
6G and wireless spectrum, at least in that regard, have very little to do with each other. T-Mobile is making very good use of that 2.5 GHz spectrum for offering very serious capacity for home internet and cellular usage.
Tough, more wires for the few homes that do benefit, more wifi for all. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
Fair point.
I get this opinion quite well.
The problem I've observed are devices that foolishly switch to 2.4ghz in a crowded space, such as the Nintendo switch. There really needs to be an extra check for devices sensitive to latency to never connect to a 2.4ghz network on a crowded channel unless it's the only option.
I run both. 5Ghz for high bandwidth devices such as phones and laptops. 2.4Ghz for IoT stuff that needs to penetrate through walls and isn't using much bandwidth.
Because of this useful niche, it probably won't go away for a long time. Just like new burglar/fire alarm panels, UPSs, and network appliances that still use RS232 serial interfaces to program some settings.
I think it’s a fair opinion, but a lot of “cheap” IoT devices only support 2.4GHz, so I do have both networks setup in my house for that reason…
IOT devices should support 5 GHz and at least for me personally, if it doesn't support it, I don't buy it. Which also means that I have no IOT devices. LOL. My alarm system only supports 2.4 GHz, but it also has a cellular radio, so has never been connected to Wi-Fi in the time I've owned it.
Why would you refuse to buy IoT devices unless they're more expensive, use more battery and have less range? Like why, what does it give you to not have a 2.4 GHz network? It's not like it'll interfere with the 5 GHz network.
Like sure the 2.4 GHz spectrum is pretty crowded and much slower. But at this point that's pretty much all that's left on 2.4GHz: low bandwidth, battery powered devices at random locations of your house and on the exterior walls of your house and all the way across the yard.
It's the ideal spectrum to put those devices on: it's dirt cheap (they all seem to use ES8266 or ESP32 chips, lots of Espressif devices on the IoT network), it uses less power, goes through walls better, and all it needs to get through is that the button has been pressed. I'm not gonna install an extra AP or two when 2.4 reaches fine, just so that a button makes my phone ring and a bell go ding dong or a camera that streams and bitrates that you could stream on dialup internet.
Phones and laptop? Yeah they're definitely all on 5 GHz. If anything I prefer my IoT on 2.4 because then I can make my 5 GHz network WPA3 and 11ac/11ax only so I don't have random IoT devices running at 11n speeds slowing down my 5 GHz network.
But cameras on 5GHz could stream very high quality 4K video directly to your phone or whatever 2.4GHz would be lots more likely to buffer and skip doing that.
My best camera does 1080p at 150kbit/s H264. Most "4K" cameras have such shit encoding they're nowhere near exceeding what 2.4 GHz can provide still. And if I were to spend money on a nice 4K camera that actually streams real 4K I would also invest on making it run over PoE because that would chew through battery like there's no tomorrow and needs a power source anyway, and would go to an NVR to store it all on a RAID array.
And if that had to happen I'd just put it on a dedicated 5 GHz network, because I want to keep the good bandwidth for the devices that needs it like the TV, phones and laptops. Devices on older WiFi standards slow down the network because they use more airtime to send data at lower rates, so fast devices gets less airtime to send data at high rates.
Using the most fitting tech for the needs is more important than trying to get them all on the latest and greatest. Devices needs to be worthy of getting granted access to my 5 GHz networks.
Channel slicing into units solves some of this and when you go higher frequency like that you can put more antennas in the same physical space so you can have like 16 transmit 16 receive to combat those airtime issues.