2.4Ghz and/or 5Ghz?

[souwalker]

Just a quick question on this router. I just got one to replace my Netgear WPN824. Plan to setup this week end but the user manual is very vague on the dual band. I can see from the manual soft copy there is a section to select the SSID and the Password (Security) for 2.4Ghz and the 5Ghz tab. I will only use the 2.4Ghz band. I have a combination of wired and wireless gear. Wireless - I have 4 iphones (4, 4S and 2x iphone 5), 1 mac pro and 2 Asus laptop.

Can I just configure and use the 2.5Ghz band or do I have to configure both?

If I have to set up both, I see I can use the same SSID and password.

What would be the best wifi security to use? I read somewhere that the iPhones have connections issues with WPA2-AES? What should I use?

many Thanks for your help.

Rgds
Pat

 

[Pierino]

You can disable the 5ghz radio if you want. Why would you not want to use the 5ghz? Less Interference. I know the iPhone 5 is dual band, not sure about your Mac book pro nor your asus laptops.
Use wpa2 for security, I do and no one has problems with it, not even my iPad nor my iPod touch 4 have problems with wpa2-aes.

 

[souwalker]

You can disable the 5ghz radio if you want. Why would you not want to use the 5ghz? Less Interference. I know the iPhone 5 is dual band, not sure about your Mac book pro nor your asus laptops.
Use wpa2 for security, I do and no one has problems with it, not even my iPad nor my iPod touch 4 have problems with wpa2-aes.

Thanks Pierino

So I can actually set both 2.4 & 5 up with the same SSID, Password and Security?

Am I understnading correctly then with both band setup, with my wifi clients, it will automatically pick up either the 2.4 or 5 depending on whether the clients have dual band or not? if that is the case then I will set dual band up with same SSID etc and let the laptop, macpro and iPhones use the relavent bands.

Please confirm.

Best Rgds
Patrick

 

[RogerSC]

Thanks Pierino

So I can actually set both 2.4 & 5 up with the same SSID, Password and Security?

Am I understnading correctly then with both band setup, with my wifi clients, it will automatically pick up either the 2.4 or 5 depending on whether the clients have dual band or not? if that is the case then I will set dual band up with same SSID etc and let the laptop, macpro and iPhones use the relavent bands.

Please confirm.

Best Rgds
Patrick

I usually set my 2.4 and 5GHz. wireless bands up with separate SSID's so that I can easily control things. The two bands are very different in terms of range. And a client can only connect to the band that it's set to use in any case.

 

[jsmiddleton4]

I have mine setup the same and control the preferred channel with the configuration of the wireless card as well as the roaming preferences. That way it is seamless for clients when they or if they switch channels.

 

[RMerlin]

I prefer having separate SSIDs. For instance you might sometimes want to switch back from 5 GHz to 2.4 GHz if you are located in a harder-to-reach spot (5 GHz has a short coverage than 2.4 GHz). Easier to do that if you have separate SSIDs, otherwise you have to dig into your network card's advanced settings to tell it which frequency to use by default.

 

[souwalker]

Thanks everyone for the replies.
I have just set up this router with separate SSID names. I have use the same network key for both the 2.4Ghz and the 5Ghz band. I have no issues with the iphones hooking up to the 2.4 band. My wife's iPhone 5 cannot connect to the 5Ghz band. It can see the 5G band but when I type in the password, tells me I cannot connect.
Rgds
Pat

 

[jsmiddleton4]

"otherwise you have to dig into your network card's advanced settings"

You make that sound as if that is difficult. It is quite simple.

There's pros and cons for both. I prefer one SSID and password for the family to use and then their hardware does any necessary switching automatically.

Setting the advanced settings on a wireless nic are really very simple.

 

[RogerSC]

Thanks everyone for the replies.
I have just set up this router with separate SSID names. I have use the same network key for both the 2.4Ghz and the 5Ghz band. I have no issues with the iphones hooking up to the 2.4 band. My wife's iPhone 5 cannot connect to the 5Ghz band. It can see the 5G band but when I type in the password, tells me I cannot connect.
Rgds
Pat

Interesting, I don't have any problem with my iPad with 5Ghz. The 5GHz. range is much shorter than 2.4GHz., but I'm not sure that's the issue that you're having. Have you tried 5GHz. on the iPhone 5 real close to the router?

 

[souwalker]

There's pros and cons for both. I prefer one SSID and password for the family to use and then their hardware does any necessary switching automatically.

Setting the advanced settings on a wireless nic are really very simple.

Can I confirm then that if I set one SSID and same password, the hardware will use whichever band it can automatically without the need for me to manually select?

Do I need to setup anything else on laptops? The laptops are over 12 months old and the NICs may just be 2.4.

Thanks

 

[jsmiddleton4]

You can set the 2 bands up with the same SSID/Password and let the hardware in your clients negotiate which is the fastest/strongest/etc. signal. The default settings in the Advanced section of your wireless card driver will probably need just a bit of attention. Not much and it isn't hard.

You can search on the maker of your laptop cards and easily find "best" settings.

For my dual band Broadcom wireless NIC I set preferred band to "A" and the bands to 20/40 hz. I rarely drop back to anything but 300 via 5 ghz.

For testing purposes you can name the SSID differently then you can connect to each, test connection speeds, throughput, range, etc. and be confident in your decisions.

I did that on my way to my settings. In testing each band is when I found out for all practical purposes one SSID/PW works very well.

I have mix of in terms of whose wireless cards are in several laptops, new iPAD, iPhone, etc. All of them work very well with the single named SSID/PW.

There was a time when I used 2 names for the SSID's but that was due to having a WDS type network. I used the 5ghz channel to connect the routers and left the 2.4ghz channel for clients. The router to router SSID was different than the clients. One of the huge benefits of dual band is needing to have a multi-router setup and being able to dedicate a channel for router to router traffic.

 

[souwalker]

You can set the 2 bands up with the same SSID/Password and let the hardware in your clients negotiate which is the fastest/strongest/etc. signal. The default settings in the Advanced section of your wireless card driver will probably need just a bit of attention. Not much and it isn't hard.

You can search on the maker of your laptop cards and easily find "best" settings.

For my dual band Broadcom wireless NIC I set preferred band to "A" and the bands to 20/40 hz. I rarely drop back to anything but 300 via 5 ghz.

For testing purposes you can name the SSID differently then you can connect to each, test connection speeds, throughput, range, etc. and be confident in your decisions.

I did that on my way to my settings. In testing each band is when I found out for all practical purposes one SSID/PW works very well.

I have mix of in terms of whose wireless cards are in several laptops, new iPAD, iPhone, etc. All of them work very well with the single named SSID/PW.

There was a time when I used 2 names for the SSID's but that was due to having a WDS type network. I used the 5ghz channel to connect the routers and left the 2.4ghz channel for clients. The router to router SSID was different than the clients. One of the huge benefits of dual band is needing to have a multi-router setup and being able to dedicate a channel for router to router traffic.

Many Thanks
PAt