Connecting to a 5 GHz Wi-Fi connection every time

Question

The Wi-Fi connection I currently connect to has both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands on the same Wi-Fi connection (not separate names).

My Windows 10 laptop can make a connection to either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. I have set it to prefer 5 GHz, but it will still occasionally connect to 2.4Ghz.

Is there any way of preventing my laptop from connecting to 2.4 GHz frequencies and to only make use of 5 GHz frequencies?

Solution 1

You can specify what band your wireless card will connect to in the advanced driver settings found under your wireless card in device manager.

If you don't want to connect to 2.4ghz disable the associated bands, i.e 802.11 b/g/n on 2.4ghz.

This solution depends on your wireless card and driver's, but most wlan nics I have seen have these options.

If you find that your card doesn't have the band settings, you may want to do something like ramhound & Pythonian suggested, not use Microsoft generic drivers with the card. But download the chipset specific driver/application.

The other option as people stated in the comments would be to change the SSID (network name) of the 2.4ghz network to anything other then the SSID that's associated with the 5ghz network.

Solution 2

Open Control Panel, and then click on "Change adapter settings" (this should appear on the left side pane). Right click on Wi-fi (or the equivalent name), and click on Properties. In the new dialog box, click on "Configure...", which will lead you to a dialog box with multiple tabs. Click on Advanced, and select "Preferred Band". Within the dialog box, on the right side, you will find 3 preferences: 1. No Preference 2. Prefer 2.4 Ghz 3. Prefer 5 Ghz

Select your preference and click OK until you close all the dialog boxes. Your wifi adapter should reset and connect to your preferred bandwidth.

This is how I connect to 5 Ghz automatically on my Windows 10 laptop. Settings and nomenclature could change with different versions of Windows, or even with different wifi adapters, but I think this is a common process.

Hope it works for you!

Comments

[Appleoddity]

Why not just change the name of the two networks so this is never a problem again on any equipment?

[Berrik]

There is only one network. Both bands operate on the same WiFi connection (only 1 network profile is created in Windows when connecting to this point for both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz). I tried seeing if there was a 2.4Ghz profile I could disable but there was no luck.

[acejavelin]

Appleoddity is correct... Unless you are using an Enterprise grade WiFi system that supports proper band steering, the best solution is unique names for specific bands (WiFi 2.4Ghz and WiFi 5Ghz or something like that) and then connect to the 5Ghz, and either change the preferred order in your laptop or remove the 2.4Ghz entry.

[Berrik]

Again, there is no separation of bands. Both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz do not appear as separate networks and do not create separate profiles on Windows 10.

[Appleoddity]

@Berrik we understand that you see only one network name. If the network is yours, you can easily change that. Reconfigure the router / wireless access point. There is no rule that both bands have to show up as a single network. Matter of fact, that is typically the wrong way to set it up - and now you see why.

[acejavelin]

The issue here is literally that both bands are broadcasting the same SSID... Your laptop may prefer the 5Ghz band, but if it thinks that the 2.4Ghz signal will provides "better" service, it will move to it automatically unless you specifically disable the 2.4Ghz band entirely. If each hand is broadcasting a unique SSID then you can set the connection properties accordingly and force connection to the 5Ghz band.

[Berrik]

I understand you're all providing a router work around that is a more than valid solution, but I was looking for a way of changing Windows 10 to only connect to 5Ghz frequencies. Apple devices, for example, connect to 5Ghz frequencies as a default. Having a similar setting for my Windows 10 device is what I am looking for.

[Run5k]

"Having a similar setting for my Windows 10 device is what I am looking for." If that's the case, it may be prudent to edit your question and specifically emphasize that. Previously, you said "Is there any way of preventing my laptop from connecting to 2.4Ghz frequencies and to only make use of 5Ghz frequencies." The suggestion to create a different SSID for each frequency meets that requirement.

[pythonian]

Depending on your wireless adapter manufacturer, some manufacturers offer a windows supplicant/application to drive your adapter. In some of those supplicants, it is possible to disable 2.4GHz. Unfortunately, the embedded windows wifi supplicant will never try to deny you connectivity. Although you can set the connection to prefer 5GHz, it will revert to 2.4GHz in order to maintain connectivity should something go wrong on 5GHz. Your best option is to look for your wifi adapter manufacturer windows supplicant. For example, Intel has a supplicant called ProSet.

[Ramhound]

" was looking for a way of changing Windows 10 to only connect to 5Ghz frequencies." - You have not provided enough information to determine if your hardware will support any other solution. You also didn't specify you are looking for a solution on the client instead of reconfiguring the access point. You might want to provide enough details and clarify your question.

[Berrik]

@Ramhound I guess there is no easy client side answer to this question. I just presumed that the hardware would be able to specify what frequencies it could connect to and that this would not factor into my question. I guess people should be stating "It is impossible to do this on Windows 10, but you could separate the frequencies on the router" as an accurate answer.

[Ramhound]

There can be a client side answer, but it depends on your hardware, which we know nothing about. Why would somebody say something is impossible when it's possible provided the hardware supports it?

[user541686]

I've tried this; this doesn't actually force the connection to be 5 GHz. My guess is it's because it only works if the card sees both of the networks simultaneously, otherwise it will think the 5 GHz network doesn't exist and will just connect to 2.4 GHz.