The internet, which enables us to be in contact with the whole world and to traverse even thousands of kilometers in seconds, has developed a lot over the years. As our dependence on the Internet increased, new studies were carried out to reach this technology faster. The internet, which we connect through a modem, allows you to connect only wired or wired + wireless, depending on the type of your modem.
Today we will introduce you the modem frequencies on the wireless side of your internet connection. Modem frequencies of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz can affect your internet speed more than you think. Let’s get to know what these two frequencies are and what they offer us.
What is the difference between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi?
The modem you use to connect to the Internet should emit a frequency if it supports wireless connectivity. 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz are these frequency technologies. First of all, you need to know what technology your modem has. Some modems emit 2.4 GHz, some 5 GHz, while others have both. Both frequencies are supported in the vast majority of modems today. Moreover, you can create a separate connection for the two of them and switch over a single internet according to your location.
While there are areas where both are good, there are also areas where they fail compared to the other. For this reason, it is necessary to know which frequency to use when using your modem. The most important difference between these two modem frequencies is the area where you will use the internet and their effects on your internet speed.
2.4 GHz; While it supports internet speed up to 600 Mbps, this rate is 1300 Mbps at 5 GHz. From this point of view, we can say that the 5 GHz frequency provides much better service. This is indeed the correct definition. You can reach higher speeds when you use the 5 GHz frequency. However, this also has a very important disadvantage. Especially in environments where walls come in and you are away from the modem, 5 GHz remains in the class. The 2.4 GHz frequency, on the other hand, can allow you to get healthy internet at farther distances by passing through the walls due to the wider frequency range.
Which modem frequency should I use?
Of course, older technology is often more intense. For this reason, 2.4 GHz; It is a more crowded line than the 5 GHz frequency. Many devices in your home or around you use the 2.4 GHz frequency. For this reason, it shows that the 2.4 GHz frequency is intense and can cause slowdown in internet speed. The 5 GHz frequency, on the other hand, makes your internet faster because it is both an empty line and a shorter wavelength. The internet speed increase brought by the short wavelength causes 5 GHz to fail in the face of obstacles such as long distance and walls.
For this reason, if you are connecting to the internet in or near the room where your modem is located, the 5 GHz frequency will add more speed to you. If you want to stay away from the modem and connect to the internet with many walls in between, the 2.4 GHz frequency will please you more at this point. Even if you can’t get a speed like the 5 GHz frequency, you can continue to use the internet at long distances. For this reason, which modem frequency you choose is very relevant to your location.
2.4 GHz Vs 5 GHz speed test
Whatever we wrote, these are the things that remain in theory. To put them into practice, I compared 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies on the same device with a dual-frequency modem in my own home. You can watch the test video I made right below:
In the video I prepared, I did a speed test on both frequencies in 3 different parts of the house. Besides the modem, we observe that the 5 GHz frequency reaches 45.7 Mbps download speed, while the 2.4 GHz frequency remains at 31.8 Mbps download speed.
We see that 5 GHz reaches a download speed of 47.1 Mbps when a wall comes in and I move 5 meters away from the modem. In the same place, I found that my download speed test for the 2.4 GHz frequency remained at 27.5 Mbps.
So far, we see that 5 GHz has been extremely successful. I wanted to complicate things a bit for the final test I’m going to run. That’s why I applied the same test by going 9 meters away with 3 walls in between. At this point I saw that the 5 GHz only hit 0.74 Mbps download speed. 2.4 GHz, on the other hand, continued to provide an internet that would at least work for me with 8.08 Mbps.
First of all, this test was done just to better understand the difference between these two technologies. It did not take place in a laboratory environment, but in completely natural conditions with a home internet. Although there are different names in the name section of Speedtest for the internet resource, it was connected via the same modem and internet. While 5 GHz is a very successful technology in short distances, we can see that 2.4 GHz is extremely useful to save the day over long distances. Since the values here are not in the laboratory environment, they cannot give a definite result, but they can help us understand the technologies.
So what do you think about the difference between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz? What are the biggest problems you suffer from wireless internet? You can share your thoughts with us in the comments section.