this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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2.4GHz wifi is not suitable for two big reasons, interference and low bandwidth. 2.4GHz wifi in any kind of suburban or city environment and sometimes even in rural will be congested with other networks, microwaves, other appliances, etc causing massive speed degradation or fluctuations. The range of 2.4GHz is just too large for all the equipment that uses it in today's world. In my previous apartment complex for example my phone could see 35 distinct 2.4GHz wifi networks while only 3 at max can operate without interfering with each other. In that same building i could only see 13 5GHz networks. Which brings me to the second issue of bandwidth

2.4GHz at least here in the US only has channels 1, 6, and 11 that will not interfere with each other. if anyone puts their network between these three channels it will knock out both the one below and the one above. Channel 3 would interfere with both channels 1 and 6 for example. By going up to 5GHz you have many more free channels, fewer networks competing for those channels, and higher bandwidth channels allowing for much higher throughput. 2.4GHz allows 40MHz wide channels which in isolation would offer ~400mbps, but you will never see that in the real world.

Personally, i think OEMs should just stop including it or have it disabled by default and only enable it in an "advanced settings" area.

Edit: I am actually really surprised at how unpopular this opinion appears to be.

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[โ€“] conciselyverbose 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's only "extremely stable" if you don't have walls in the way and don't have any tech that ever has had a single budget constraint on it.

5GHz has bad range in the real world and support from devices is awful.

[โ€“] [email protected] -5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

You and I see 5 gigahertz quite differently than because I have been using 5 gigahertz exclusively for around 5 years now and even devices that are around 10 years old all have support for it.