What Wi-Fi Range Should I Use for My Devices?
A wireless network is like an emergency kit for your car (or an earthquake-prone California home). You don’t really think about it when it is, but you will notice that it is not there when you need it. Also, you want to make sure it is configured to give you the best experience possible.
And that’s exactly what I’m doing in this week’s Tech 911 advice column: figuring out the simple yet essential aspect of setting up your home Wi-Fi so your devices can connect at top speed.
I’ll let reader Danny explain:
“Is there an optimal way to allocate NUMBER of devices to the 2.4G or 5G WiFi band at home? I understand the range / speed considerations, but assuming all devices are dual-band compatible, is it better to have 10 fixed devices near the 5G router and 2 2.4GHz mobile devices, or should they be more evenly distributed (i.e. E . 6 each “
For those who are not that well versed in how to connect to Wi-Fi, let me explain for a moment what is going on. Most modern routers – if they’re not terrible – operate in two bands: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. In practice, this means that your router will likely ask you to create an SSID and password for two different wireless networks upon initial setup. (Some routers allow one SSID / password for both, and then your devices decide if they connect to 5GHz or 2.4GHz.)
I recommend that you select a separate SSID for each band so that you can then map your devices according to your needs. That’s why:
Connect to a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network and you will probably have the best range – you can watch videos, read websites, and do everything else on your devices as far away as possible. Connect to a 5GHz Wi-Fi network and you ditch some of that range for speed. This is the only way to get the fastest speed possible for your wireless LAN devices (paired with a Wi-Fi router with similar capabilities), and bandwidth is usually less congested when you connect Wireless-N devices (which may also work on higher speeds than a 2.4GHz connection, depending on their capabilities and how far away they are from your router).
Clear? In other words. 2.4GHz is for band, 5.0GHz is for speed – a very simplistic way to look at this, but a decent rule of thumb.
Now, to get to the root of your question, I would look at your devices’ bandwidth needs first. For example, you can probably connect your smart thermostat and smart speakers to the 2.4GHz band, as I doubt they need to transfer a lot of data back and forth. Your smart TV ? Ditto if you don’t stream a lot (like Netflix). Then I would probably pick 5GHz to avoid interference and maximize speed – assuming your TV is close enough to your router for that to matter.
Is the tablet in the room quite far from the router? For the best connection, you may need a 2.4 GHz frequency. (When I type this, I am sitting on a 2.4GHz network with my laptop with wireless AC, which annoys me, but I have nothing to work with if I connect to the 5GHz network of this house. I am just too far away from the router to help it.)
Is your camera Nest ? You can probably get by with 2.4GHz as it’s just 1080p video streaming. (This probably consumes about 5 Mbps, which is pretty negligible.) Your laptop ? Fully 5 GHz, unless you find that you cannot establish a good connection from a distance. It’s the same with a wireless AC smartphone (if you have one).
While this advice may seem to be the opposite, I would use 2.4 GHz for your devices that would not benefit from a super-speed connection, and I would save 5 GHz for devices where speed is a priority.
There are two reasons why you won’t just offload everything at 5GHz, which seems logical – it’s the range that allows you to use higher speeds. First, there is the aforementioned range issue. Secondly, the more devices you connect to one of the router’s Wi-Fi networks, the slower it can work. This is not because you just plugged in a bunch of devices, as they will not affect anything unless they are actively transferring a large amount of data. However, if you have 20 devices connected to 5GHz, and some of them are actively consuming your connection, it can drop speeds for everything else.
Or, as Google says :
“Every time a device connects to your Wi-Fi network, it has to compete with other devices for bandwidth (internet speed). Netflix streaming TV, laptop booting, Xbox Live gaming session – they all need the fastest connection. But the bandwidth is limited. Your bandwidth is limited, resulting in a slower connection. “
And here’s an example from Netgear :
“However, since the router’s wireless channel is shared by all wireless clients, adding clients will inevitably slow down network access for all clients. This will be especially noticeable if some clients are using a lot of wireless bandwidth, for example, when watching a video or downloading via torrent. Therefore, the maximum number of wireless clients that will work satisfactorily when connected to the same router will vary depending on what the devices are used for. It will also vary depending on how much congestion or interference is on the wireless network where the router is installed. “
I suspect this is not such a big problem when you are using an AC wireless router as you will have much more bandwidth on a typical AC1200 + router (at least 1.3 Gbps) than on a typical N300 or N600 wireless router. … n router (maximum 300 Mbps on each band, but usually only 150 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band). A number of connected, data-hungry wireless-ac devices will slow down everyone’s service, but the impact on your much slower wireless-n devices shouldn’t be as obvious as they are already slower to begin with.