Some Dual Band Router Questions

Hi there, i'm in the market for a new router as I'm having BT inifinity installed on Tuesday. I'm looking at Dual Band routers (d link 855 or Netgear WNDR3700) But i wanted to clear up some confusion about how Dual Band Routers work!

Do Dual Band Routers basically work by having 2 seperate SSID's (on for 2.4ghz one for 5ghz) and then you choose which to connect to? Or does a compatible Dual Band reciever connect to both at the same time? Thus getting more throughput? I noticed that a lot of the routers say you can prioitise Video Streaming down the 5ghz channel. How would this effect recievers just using 2.4ghz? Would it block of the streaming - or just send it down 5GHZ for 5ghz recievers only?

Sorry if my questions are a bit confused but i haven't been able to get my answers by google!

Thanks a lot!

Jon B

my WNDR3700 has 2 separate radios for 2.4GHz and 5GHz, so you will see 2 access points.

Dual band routers tend to let you configure the bands individually so you can choose to make the SSID the same or different, and similarly you can choose whether to make the security settings the same or different.

Some models will allow you to isolate the wi-fi networks such that wireless clients on each band cannot see each another but can still see the wired network (this tends to be offered in conjunction with VLAN on more expensive models).

If the SSID and security settings are the same, and if you have a dual band receiving hardware, it will choose either, probably based on the same method it uses to choose between separate access points when roaming, so mostly on signal strength at the receiver position.

I'm not aware of any standard laptop wi-fi hardware that connects to both the 2.4 and 5GHz bands simulteaneously when joining a network, and would not be much advantage over just joining the 5GHz (a/n) network. (I'll stand corrected if someone knows of examples).

Generally by convention you make the SSIDs the same if they provide access to the same wired network. Most built-in wi-fi clients will list this as one wi-fi network in the "available networks"; utilities which show more detail such as channel number will list two.

But if you want more control over which devices connect to which band you can make them different.

The blurb which says about prioritising video streaming on the 5GHz band is not really talking about the access point / router limiting types of traffic to only one band. Rather, that if you you have 'a' or 'a/n' capable kit there is much less interference on the 5GHz band, and 'n' capable devices can use wider bands and/or MIMO for higher thoughput.

Any 'b' devices will slow down the 2.4GHz band (affecting 'b/g' and 'b/g/n' devices) but not affect the 5GHz band ('a' or 'a/n' devices).

Also the channels on 2.4GHz overlap (in the sense the width of channel 6 covers 4,5,7,8 too (hence the idea of spacing channels on 1,6,11 or 1,5,9,13). 5GHz channels do not overlap (unless using a wide (40Mhz) mode). Get a copy of inSSIDer or similar if you want to see what's in use locally.

If you are looking for dual band check the router can have both bands active at the same time (rather than either or in the config). I believe the d-link 855 model allows both active (the non-ADSL one does).