How do I find out if my wireless card supports 5 GHz?
Solution 1
Find out the interface name, by running iwconfig
$ iwconfig
eth0 no wireless extensions.
lo no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"EvanCarroll"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: D8:50:E6:44:B2:C8
Bit Rate=19.5 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=61/70 Signal level=-49 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:1 Invalid misc:80 Missed beacon:0
In this case it is wlan0
, then run iwlist <interface> freq
,
$ iwlist wlan0 freq
wlan0 13 channels in total; available frequencies :
Channel 01 : 2.412 GHz
Channel 02 : 2.417 GHz
Channel 03 : 2.422 GHz
Channel 04 : 2.427 GHz
Channel 05 : 2.432 GHz
Channel 06 : 2.437 GHz
Channel 07 : 2.442 GHz
Channel 08 : 2.447 GHz
Channel 09 : 2.452 GHz
Channel 10 : 2.457 GHz
Channel 11 : 2.462 GHz
Channel 12 : 2.467 GHz
Channel 13 : 2.472 GHz
Current Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
None of these channels are outside of 2.4 GHz. It does not support 5 GHz.
Solution 2
If you're trying to discover what your card supports, iw phy
is a nice solution with a lot more information (including supported bands).
iwlist
is showing more what's available and/or allowed in your locale, what was disabled due to DFS channels, etc., not what your device supports. From the iwlist
man page:
freq[uency]/channel Give the list of available frequencies in the device and the number of defined channels. Please note that usually the driver returns the total number of channels and only the frequencies available in the present locale, so there is no one-to-one mapping between frequencies displayed and channel numbers.
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Brandon Condrey
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Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Brandon Condrey almost 2 years
I have the
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 2200 (rev c4)
How do I find out if that card/driver support 5 GHz?
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Admin almost 4 years
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derobert about 10 yearsIt'd be nice if you also showed how to do this with the
iw
tool as well. I think the others are possibly considered obsolete... -
stef about 10 yearsright.
iw phy
shows detailed capabilities. beside of this you may also find wifi cards that are capable of 5ghz, but the driver isn't. -
Daniele Segato about 8 yearsand does this means the Linux driver does not support it or the card itself does not? Or to rephrase it: can this mean the driver simply does not support it?
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Brandon Condrey about 8 years@DanieleSegato I am unsure of how to answer that. The whole thing is predicated on there being a card with specific bands not supported by driver. That may exist. However, it sounds theoretical and it's another question.
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Brandon Condrey almost 8 yearsThat's simply factually incorrect, as 802.11n /can/ support 5ghz, even though it isn't require to support 5ghz by the spec.
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toliveira about 6 years@DanieleSegato, I don't know that answer for your question, but you can check the manufacture's website if your are in doubt. For the OP, for example: ark.intel.com/products/66888/…. It says it is single band.
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Mark Twain almost 6 yearsWhat if before switching to Ubuntu I was using 5Ghz Wi-Fi network on same laptop on Windows and after installing Ubuntu
iwlist <interface> freq
displays only 2.4 Ghz channels? -
Brandon Condrey almost 6 years@colotiline it is totally possibly your wifi driver itself doesn't support 5ghz. I would be interesting in knowing your output to LSPCI, you should ask another question about that. specifically, "does <card> support 5ghz in linux"