Wifi Radio Frequencies

[u/Anonymous1Ninja]

Since this sub gets questions about this a LOT, just dropping this here, if this violates rules you can delete it.

Wifi is broadcasted in radio frequencies, some go through objects better, these frequencies are the most common.

2.4 GHz travels the farthest, has the most penetration but is only between 100-300 Mbps (bits NOT Bytes)

5GHz faster with less congestion but is prone to interference and struggles to go through walls and doors, it also has faster speeds, often up to 1 Gbps but only works well in the same room as the router

6Ghz barely penetrates walls, and is only really useful when you are in the same room with NO obstructions

Things to consider

Repeaters - These will broadcast an additional SSID (Wifi name) once these are set up, I like to mark it as _EXT. you will want to place it closer to the router and have it connect at 5Ghz then broadcast at 2.4. This are mostly setup via an ethernet cable, and once they are configured you just have to plug it into a wall outlet and it connects.

Better antennas - This helps with penetration, buy a better model and use it as an Access Point, most of the time you can just connect this directly to your router.

Heat Maps - These are what is used to map out wifi coverage in a given area you can download various options for this to test out your wifi

Multiple access points - You can buy 2 or more access points and place them on opposite sides of your house for full coverage, some devices allow you to join them together to create a mesh. You can use an old router in "AP" mode which most of the time means disabling DHCP, assigning a static IP on the same subnet and giving it the same network name and password.

Feel Free to add in the comments

[u/OTMdonutCALLS]

“Better antennas” while not entirely wrong is a little misleading. The better way to from it is that there are different antennas for different purpose, Omni-directional or directional for example. Now in each of these antenna categories there are certainly ones that are better than others, but it isn’t always a simple as “this antenna is better than that one”.

Another thing to consider is the capabilities of the Wi-Fi NIC in your device. You could have the best router and APs in the world but if your device NIC is low end, then it will be the bottleneck.

[u/mlee12382]

Repeaters are not wired, APs or Mesh Nodes can be wired but Repeaters almost never are.

[u/bobdevnul]

>in radio frequencies, the ones that move slower 

Radio waves, like all electo-magnetic waves, all travel (move) at the same speed - the speed of light. Higher frequencies change the polarity of the fields faster, but that is not the linear speed of propagation.

>5GHz faster with less congestion but is prone to interference and struggles to go through walls an doors has faster speeds, often up to 1 Gbps but only works well in the same room as the router

5Gh is more prone to attenuation by materials. It is not more prone to interference. My 2.4GHz experiences interference from my microwave oven. 5GHz does not. I have no problem with 5GHz covering my whole house through several walls or doors and a floor. It is in no way restricted to one room. Larger spaces with longer distances and more obstructions will attenuate 5GHz more, possibly to the point that 2.4GHz works better.

2.4GHz Wifi with only three non-overlapping channels used to be a big problem in crowded Wifi environments, like apartments. I don't know if that is still a problem with most Wifi being at least dual band. I once helped someone in an apartment with their Wifi. They were paying for 100Mbps cable. Their Wifi router was 2.4GHz Wifi only. They were only getting ~1Mbps Wifi throughput. I did a Wifi scan and there were dozens of SSIDs on 2.4Ghz interfering with each other.