56/58(ac)?

[Alexander Wilson]

Hi there,

Painter and Plasterer by trade so not sure how to go about this. I am hoping this a simple question and a simple answer. I am new to the forums.

My phone was not connecting to my 5ghz so I thought it could be channels and looked at inSSIDer to see.

My 5ghz frequency is (blue) on the right. I moved it up to 56 just so it wasn't conflicting with someone elses private 5ghz (grey) to the left.
The question is really. Why is my 5ghz channel showing 56/58(ac) instead of just 56 (or whichever channel I choose).
Whatever channel I pick through my router it will show in inSSIDer that its actual spread out onto several adjacent channels.
What router settings do I need to just have the 5ghz frequency on one channel. Currently my link score is 5, which is poo. How can the link score to 100?

If anybody wishes to help, I am sure I can lend them some Painting or Plastering advice. Or help a brother out?
Thanks.

 

[thiggins]

Welcome to the forums. 802.11ac uses 80 MHz bandwidth, i.e. four channels by default. When you set a channel, you're setting the primary channel, which is used to manage the connection. When data is transmitted, all the channels are used.

To use only a single 5 GHz channel, you'd need to set your route or AP to 20 MHz channel width. This might not be possible with some products. Doing this will also lower the bandwidth (speed) you can achieve.

Can't help you on the link score. I don't know how inSSIDer calculates it.

 

[Alexander Wilson]

Thank you. Helpful none the less, thanks for steering me in the right direction.

Do you know what the relation between having fibre optic broadband and 5ghz is?
I am probably wrong right, doesn't fibre optic mean a better transmission of data through wires and the 5ghz is the radio signal from the router. Why do I as an ISP customer receive 5ghz? From what I've read on forums, 2.4Ghz is just superior for home connections anyway and 5ghz is generally for outside transmission?

What part of the equation by the ISP says 5ghz is connected to fibre optics?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Fibre optic broadband can refer to a variety of different technologies, but for Joe-public it's a marketing term used to distinguish the old-style internet over telephone wires (BT's ADSL in the UK) and newer "cable/fibre" services (Virgin Media's cable or BT's fibre in the UK). So it's a term that describes your ISP's infrastructure. As a customer you normally don't care about the technology, you're only interested in availability, cost and speed.

2.4GHz and 5GHz have nothing to do with the above. They are radio frequency bands that WiFi devices use to communicate with your wireless router. Initially there was just the 2.4GHz band which has 11 channels (13 in the EU). But as WiFi became more popular the 2.4GHz band became overcrowded with everybody's devices interfering with each other. So eventually a second frequency band (5GHz) was allocated for WiFi use. This has a lot more channels and is less crowded (and faster). The downside of the 5GHz band is that the radio signals don't travel as far as the 2.4GHz signals. They are also more susceptible to being blocked by things like thick walls.

 

[Alexander Wilson]

Thank you for the response and perfect clarity that explains all I need to know and pass on information to friends.

Have a good weekend.