In a modern digital home, few devices are as useful and essential as a wireless router , which offers us the possibility of connecting to the internet from practically any corner of the house, of course, as long as the signal arrives well enough not to cause any type of incident or problem.
And in many modern routers we find one of its key features: 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual band support . But what exactly are they and how could we take advantage of each one?
We must bear in mind that not all Wifi routers offer both bands, although most of the wireless devices that we can find today on the market, do. In these cases, many of these products are advertised as “dual band” , and although the characteristics of each device are different, the principles behind both bands are the same, regardless of the hardware installed.
Of course, we cannot forget something fundamental at this point: we need devices that support the use of both bands , since it will be of little use to have a Wi-Fi router with dual band 2.4GHz and 5GHz if, then, the device with which we connect is not supported.
Knowing a little more about wireless frequencies
Wifi connectivity works through radio waves , in the same way that a real radio or mobile phone network does. Both wireless routers and adapters do the essential work of converting these radio waves that tend to float in the air to real 1s and 0s.
The determined frequency of a wireless wave indicates how fast they are moving and how tight they are. Thus, the Wifi router will work at a much faster (or higher) frequency than the radio or the television, which in turn allows a greater transport of data.
The higher the frequency, the faster the data transmission will be . But all that glitters is not gold.
Any Wifi router or router that is labeled as dual band means that it is capable of encoding and decoding radio waves at both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies. And in turn, these bands need to be compatible with the wireless standard implemented by our router and devices, usually starting with 802 .11, followed by a letter or two.
Main differences between 2.4GHz and 5GHz
While 2.4GHz offers a longer range, but a weaker signal, the 5GHz option offers a faster and stronger signal, but is not capable of traveling that far around our home. This is mainly due to the fact that the waves attenuate faster at higher frequencies, and the same happens with the Wi-Fi signal. For example, devices that use 5GHz will have more problems with walls and other objects when connecting to Wi-Fi .
While it is true that we will still be limited by the speed of our incoming bandwidth, the 5GHz option is more likely to be able to serve that bandwidth much faster and more reliably, compared to the 2.4GHz band. Although this is originally the case, everything will depend on a wide variety of factors, including how many devices are connected to the Wi-Fi network.
The other difference is found in the number of devices that could be connected in each band without problems arising. The 2.4GHz option, for example, has fewer channels, only three of which do not overlap, while 5GHz supports up to a total of 23 channels that do not overlap, so it will support a greater number of wireless devices without interference. each.
Generally, it is possible to divide dual band routers into two different categories. For example, some routers transmit the bands as separate Wi-Fi networks, while other devices do it with the same network name, in such a way that the devices end up connecting to the band that is stronger depending on the position where we are inside. From home. In the latter case, some devices will even allow us to manually choose one or the other option, although most will tend to do so automatically.
