What is the characteristic between 2.4 and 5GHz wireless?

4GHz (802.11b/g/n/ax)

  • 4GHz frequency is able to reach farther than the 5GHz frequency. The characteristics that waves attenuate much faster at higher frequencies. Therefore, if you are more concerned with the coverage, you should select 2.4GHz rather than 5GHz.
  • 4GHz suffers more interferences like Bluetooth, microwave and so on than 5GHz.
  • 4GHz has fewer channel options with only three of them non-overlapping, while 5GHz has 23 non-overlapping channels.

5GHz (802.11a/n/ac/ax)

  • 5GHz has more channels than 2.4GHz, this reduces the interference created by channel-overlapping.
  • If 5GHz radio uses the DFS channels, it needs to wait for 1 minute before service become available.
  • If 5GHz radio uses the weather radar channels, it needs to wait for 10 minutes before service become available.