2.4 GHz vs 5 GHz WiFi: What is the difference?
hello everyone have you ever purchased anew Wi-Fi router and you notice that therouter has both 2.4 gigahertz and 5gigahertz frequency bands or maybe yourexisting router has both of them and didyou ever wonder why some routers havethese dual bands so that’s what we’regoing to talk about in this video now afrequency band is how wireless data istransmitted between devices these bandsare radio waves that carry the data andthese bands are either 2.4 gigahertz or5 gigahertz now a lot of Wi-Fi routerswill only transmit one of these bandswhich would be the 2.4 band and that’sbecause it’s the most common frequencyand these are called single band routersbut a lot of newer Wi-Fi routers willtransmit both the 2.4 and 5 gigahertzbands and these are called dual bandWi-Fi routers now the 2.4 band workspretty well it’s the standard band butthe problem is that it’s not just astandard band that’s used in Wi-Firouters it’s also the standard bandthat’s used in a lot of other devicesthings like microwave ovens cordlessphones Bluetooth devices and wirelesscameras all used a 2.4 gigahertz bandand this became a problem because thefact that so many other devices used the2.4 band the signal became overcrowdedand was causing a lot of interferencewith Wi-Fi signals and when this happensit slows down the Wi-Fi network speedand sometimes could cause you to loseconnection to the Wi-Fi router so thatis why the 5 gigahertz band was addedthe 5 gigahertz band is a newer band andso it’s not as commonly used as the 2.4so it’s used by fewer devices andbecause it’s used by fewer devices the 5gigahertz is not as crowded so there isno interference or minimal interferenceso using the 5 gigahertz would relievethe problem related to slow Networkspeedsand connection drops that will be causedby interference from other devicesanother reason why the 2.4 is morevulnerable to interference is because ofthe difference in wireless channels nowif you’re not familiar with what awireless channel is a wireless channelis just a way to fine-tune and alter afrequency sometimes you might need tochange to a different channel if you areexperiencing interference from differentwireless devices and changing to adifferent channel will give you thatability the 2.4 gigahertz band has 11channels to choose from but of these 11channels only 3 are non-overlappingso basically you have three solidchannels to choose from but the 5gigahertz has more channels it has 25non-overlapping channelsand some other differences between a 2.4and 5 gigahertz band is the speed andthe range that they cover the 2.4gigahertz band transmits data at aslower speed than the 5 gigahertz but itdoes have a longer range than the 5gigahertz the 5 gigahertz band transmitsdata at a faster speed than a 2.4 but ithas a shorter range the 5 gigahertz hasa shorter range because it has a higherfrequency and higher frequencies have aharder time penetrating solid objectssuch as floors and walls in a buildingso as you can see on this illustrationthis dual band Wi-Fi router isbroadcasting a 2.4 gigahertz band whichis the green color and it’s alsobroadcasting a 5 gigahertz band which isthe red color so as you can see the 2.4band has a longer range and the signalcan cover most of this building and itcan also penetrate the second floor andthe walls but the 5 gigahertz band has ashorter range the signal doesn’tpenetrate the second floor or the wallswhich limits its range inside a buildingso the question is which band do youwant to actually use and that reallydepends on your situation they both havetheir advantages and disadvantages theadvantage of a 2.4 gigahertz is that ithas a farther range and it can penetratesolid objects better however thedisadvantage that it has is that it’smore vulnerable to interference becauseso many other devices use the same bandand it’s also slower than the 5gigahertz and the advantage of the 5gigahertz is that it has a highertransfer speed and it’s less vulnerableto interference but at the same time itdoes have a shorter range and it has aharder time penetrating through solidobjects and if you’re interested ingetting a dual band Wi-Fi router I’llput a link in the description of thisvideo below of a dual band Wi-Fi routerthat I personally recommendand thank you for watchingyouEnglish (auto-generated)
