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Force WiFi to Use 5Ghz

Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 4:12 pm
by MrSniffles
Does anyone know of a way of forcing a USB wifi adapter to use 5ghz? Or, I guess, more to the point, know if the drivers that ship with Mister support 5ghz?

I'm using an Edimax EW-7822ULC but it only ever connects at 2.4ghz. I even tried blocking the MAC address of it on my router's 2.4ghz wireless network, to try and force it to use 5ghz, but that didn't work. The device itself is definitely capable of 5ghz.

I also tried adding the freq_list settings to the wpa_supplicant file but that didn't seem to work either.

Anyone know if its possible please?

Re: Force WiFi to Use 5Ghz

Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 6:47 pm
by Cebion
Often it comes to range and signal strength. 5 GHz has a terrible range. What do you need a 5 GHz connection on the mister for?

Re: Force WiFi to Use 5Ghz

Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 6:50 pm
by MrSniffles
I probably dont need it, per-se... but I'd rather have use the 5ghz as it'll give me faster speeds when copying larger CD-rom images onto the SD card.

Re: Force WiFi to Use 5Ghz

Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 8:50 pm
by Sorgelig
I don't think there is universal way to stick to 5GHz.
What i did on my WiFi router - i gave different names for 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. So i can choose the frequency by SSID.

Re: Force WiFi to Use 5Ghz

Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 1:56 pm
by ziggurat
Sorgelig wrote: Thu May 28, 2020 8:50 pm I don't think there is universal way to stick to 5GHz.
What i did on my WiFi router - i gave different names for 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. So i can choose the frequency by SSID.
MrSniffles wrote: Thu May 28, 2020 6:50 pm I probably dont need it, per-se... but I'd rather have use the 5ghz as it'll give me faster speeds when copying larger CD-rom images onto the SD card.
I dont think you will get any, or maybe barely any speed increase on 5Ghz over usb 2.0, but forcing 5Ghz can be better for people who are in the rare situation of super crowded 2.4Ghz enviornment and it wont switch it self.

You can limit which channels you are connected to by adding a list of frequencies in the wpa_supplicant.conf, outside the connection block, by adding them like so

Code: Select all

freq_list=5500 5520
You need to use the center frequency of each channel you connect to. The list of which can be found on example wikipedia.

Keep in mind that you should first check if your usb dongle supports 5ghz at all, if it didn't pick 5ghz automatically, then you might not have support for 5ghz at all. You can do that using

Code: Select all

iwlist chan

Re: Force WiFi to Use 5Ghz

Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 4:14 pm
by skyfire
I just ordered EW-7822ULC on Amazon about a week ago. My Edimax EW-7811UN would work initially but after a minute or two lose connection. I assumed it was because of interference from my bluetooth adapter (because it seemed to work fine without the bluetooth). So I thought if I connected to wifi on 5Ghz it would solve the interference problem.

I'm thinking now if it might have been the unpowered MakerSpot otg hub that wasn't providing enough juice. Heck I'm still using a 8bitdo bluetooth adapter which is rather large and wondering would a regular bluetooth adapter be better.

Think I need to get myself a proper usb hub.