That, in turn, means that you are more or less forced to select to use the 2.4GHz band, which deactivates the 5GHz band communication completely.
This is bad because a lot of Wi-Fi clients only have support for 2.4GHz.
The cheaper low budget type is often called “S elective Dual Band” and means that you have to pick in the router configuration if you want it to use either only the 2.4GHz band or only the 5GHz band. There are two types of Dual Band when it comes to 802.11n. Those access points that can only offer 150Mbps 802.11n often lack a bunch of other 802.11n features and should probably be avoided. It was added later to offer a cheaper option for consumers. The 150Mbps option is often a sign of a low budget Wi-Fi router because that option didn’t even exist when 802.11n was first created. Each stream can provide up to 150Mbps max theoretical throughput.ĭepending on the number of antennas that the devices have they can support 150Mbps, 300Mbps or 450Mbps throughput using SU-MIMO. If a product supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz communication it is called Dual-Band.Ĩ02.11n can utilise SU-MIMO with spatial streams to combine several streams into a higher total throughput speed, together with increased channel widths. But it can also offer optional support on the 5GHz band and then also has backward compatibility with 802.11a. It is backward compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g and must support 2.4GHz communication.
802.11nĨ02.11n is a big upgrade compared to the previously mentioned standards. It runs over 2.4GHz and supports up to 54 Mbps. So keep a look out for that “a” in the WiFi Certified logo! 802.11gĨ02.11g is the successor of 802.11b. The most important information you can glean from the WiFi Certified logo is that if the logo contains the “a” label then you know that the product can communicate over the 5GHz band, which is a huge benefit. These days, however, the 5GHz band is vital to any newer Wi-Fi product, and 802.11a can be used as a fallback for newer standards if necessary.
It supports much higher speeds, up to 54 Mbps, but over the 5GHz band.īack in those days when the 802.11a standard was first created the 5GHz band couldn’t really be used in most places of the world (it wasn’t yet an “unlicensed radio band”) so 802.11a didn’t become very popular back then. 802.11aĨ02.11a is also one of the older standards. It supports a theoretical maximum throughput of 11 Mbps over short ranges using the 2.4GHz band. 802.11bĨ02.11b is one of the oldest Wi-Fi standards. So if you find two products such as a Wi-Fi router and a Wi-Fi network card for a computer and both have the WiFi logo which includes the “ac” label then those products will be able to communicate with each other. The product has also been tested within Wi-Fi Alliance for those supported standards. The stamp consists of the “WiFi” brand in the middle, surrounded by a bunch of characters representing which Wi-Fi standards that the product can support. Any equipment that fulfils the requirements get the official stamp of the organisation which looks like this:
All manufacturers within this organisation work together to test each other’s equipment against the equipment of other manufacturers so that they work together. To fix that problem for Wi-Fi networks almost all manufacturers agreed a long time ago to create an organisation called the “Wi-Fi Alliance”. This could prevent equipment from different manufacturers from working perfectly with each other. The standards for Wi-Fi communication are always named beginning with “802.11” and end with different characters such as “a”, “b”, “n” or “ac”.Įven though standards are developed by standards groups where experts from manufacturers and other organisations agree on how things should function a somewhat common problem with standards is that different equipment manufacturers might then not interpret the finalised standards in exactly the same way. There are a lot of standards for Wi-Fi networks and how they should operate.