2.4Ghz or 5Ghz?

[SiliconSwitch]

I apologize if this question has already been asked a million times. I just set up a Dlink DIR-825 in our new house and I'm trying to decide which frequency to use for our laptops. I used a wifi strength meter to survey the house and it seems that the 5ghz band gets about 10% less signal throughout the house. I read that the 5ghz isn't as good at going through objects/walls as the 2.4ghz is due to the wavelength. I also read about interference on the 2,4ghz band due to cordless phones, microwaves etc...

Long story short, am I better using the 2.4ghz range for our laptops since it has the better range? I could use the 5ghz if I needed it for saying streaming hd movies or something like that.

Thanks

 

[enuro12]

Did your wifi strength meter tell you what strength you've got?

Consider this,
2.4ghz w/ excellent signal & lots of noise from other devices or
5ghz with/ good signal & low noise from other devices

With less re-transmitted packets & interference you may see better performance from the 5ghz.

 

[NetJunkie]

Tons of Wifi access points in my neighborhood and mine is the only one on 5GHz...so that's what I use.

 

[E4g1e]

5GHz for me (especially since I'm now using a DLink DIR-825-B1 router and a Netgear WNDA3100 v1.0 USB dual-band 802.11n adapter). I used to use an internal PCI Linksys WMP600N card, but it is very poor at 5GHz sensitivity (only 2 bars out of 5 signal strength even at 25 feet away from the router on the same floor). The USB Netgear adapter often gets 4 bars out of 5 in signal reception on that exact same 5GHz band.

My first separate router was a Netgear WNDR3300 selectable dual-band router - but I was never totally satisfied with it: The 5GHz radio was woefully weak, and even the 2.4GHz radio was no more powerful than the 802.11g radio built into an old 2Wire DSL Residential Gateway that I originally received with the SBC (now AT&T) DSL service.

 

[timreichhart]

I hope you dont plan on using 5Ghz outside because 5Ghz dont go very well through trees like 2Ghz does.

 

[E4g1e]

I hope you dont plan on using 5Ghz outside because 5Ghz dont go very well through trees like 2Ghz does.

True. But I also hope you don't plan on using 2.4GHz in a crowded area because there are only three theoretically open frequencies within the 2.4GHz band: channels 1,6 and 11 (all of the other channels would have suffered from adjacent channel interference). In my area, the entire 2.4GHz band is completely saturated by nearby wireless stationary devices (and that's not to mention mobile wireless devices). In my situation, if I use 2.4GHz, I would have either knocked everybody else offline or suffer severe interference from nearby wireless devices - some of which are as far as two city blocks from where I'm at.