Terrible 5GHz wifi band. I need it disabled.

[MrYorkiebar]

I have...
- BT Home Hub 6
- TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 N900 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Adapter

Basically I get atrocious speeds on my 5 GHz band, download speeds being less than 1 tenth of the 2.4 GHz band.

I can't find anyway to make it manually ignore the 5 GHz band altogether. I have tried the "netsh show wlan profiles" thing on command prompt but it only shows one connection profile, I've tried looking in the advanced settings in the adapter properties but there's no band settings, and lastly I've tried using the TP- link app to manually switch to the 2.4 GHz band but it just ignores my decision. I could watch YouTube just fine before my PC starting preferring the 5 GHz band but now I can't do anything because it wont switch back.

I need it to just stop connecting to the 5GHz band altogether. Any help is greatly appreciated

PS: I can't disable the 5 GHz band on my router because reasons

 

[Dunlop0078]

You should be able to turn it off completely, you need to get into your routers GUI. Open your web browser and put your default gateway into the address bar, the default gateway can be different from router to router. Type ipconfig in cmd prompt to find your default gateway. A couple popular default gateways are 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254

 

[MrYorkiebar]

You should be able to turn it off completely, you need to get into your routers GUI. Open your web browser and put your default gateway into the address bar, the default gateway can be different from router to router. Type ipconfig in cmd prompt to find your default gateway. A couple popular default gateways are 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254

Thanks for the reply but my router can only turn it off for everybody. I don't have the option of disabling certain devices from connecting to the 5GHz band.

 

[Dunlop0078]

You should be able to turn it off completely, you need to get into your routers GUI. Open your web browser and put your default gateway into the address bar, the default gateway can be different from router to router. Type ipconfig in cmd prompt to find your default gateway. A couple popular default gateways are 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254

Thanks for the reply but my router can only turn it off for everybody. I don't have the option of disabling certain devices from connecting to the 5GHz band.

You could change the SSID and password of the 5ghz band on the router and it will appear as a separate connection in your device, then only sign into the 2.4ghz band on your device and it will only connect to that. Beyond that specifying what band the device uses would be done on said device with windows you would do it with the netsh command, if only one connection is showing up then it has never connected to 2.4ghz before or that table somehow got cleared.

 

[MrYorkiebar]

You should be able to turn it off completely, you need to get into your routers GUI. Open your web browser and put your default gateway into the address bar, the default gateway can be different from router to router. Type ipconfig in cmd prompt to find your default gateway. A couple popular default gateways are 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254

Thanks for the reply but my router can only turn it off for everybody. I don't have the option of disabling certain devices from connecting to the 5GHz band.

You could change the SSID and password of the 5ghz band on the router and it will appear as a separate connection in your device, then only sign into the 2.4ghz band on your device and it will only connect to that. Beyond that specifying what band the device uses would be done on said device with windows you would do it with the netsh command, if only one connection is showing up then it has never connected to 2.4ghz before or that table somehow got cleared.

Changing the SSID isn't an option either as it would mess with devices currently connected. The BTHUB6 shows that it keeps connecting to the 2.4GHz band but for a very short time before switching back to 5GHz. The netsh thing shows one profile of just BThub6 (no specific band) despite the hub showing it connecting to both.

 

[tsnor]

Are you using the same SSID for the 2.4 ghz and the 5ghz? IF so the choice of 2.4ghz or 5ghz is a roaming decision. (I use different SSIDs, and then manage which frequency I use by selecting the right SSID, but you can't do this without changing the 5ghz SSID).

Likely it's 5ghx having much worse performance than 2.4 because you are at a distance where 2.4 is better than 5ghz. 5ghz degrades faster with distance and has more trouble with walls. If you use inSSIDer (free download, google it) you will be able to verify this.

If you goto Device Manager--> network--> your adapter --> properties --> advanced
Do you see a field called "roaming decision" ? (my adapter has it, not sure if all do).
If so try changing it from "auto" to "optimize distance".

 

[tsnor]

You should be able to turn it off completely, you need to get into your routers GUI. Open your web browser and put your default gateway into the address bar, the default gateway can be different from router to router. Type ipconfig in cmd prompt to find your default gateway. A couple popular default gateways are 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254

Thanks for the reply but my router can only turn it off for everybody. I don't have the option of disabling certain devices from connecting to the 5GHz band.

You can turn off 5ghz just for your PC with mac filtering. You go to MAC ADDRESS filtering for the 5 GHZ radio and create a rule that causes the 5 ghz radio to refuse to connect to the MAC address of your PC. This will block 5ghz just for you. (See my early post, try that before you mess with this).

Steps for MAC address filtering that work with my routers, I did not look at your manual.
1. Get your PCs 5 ghz MAC address. Easy way to do that is connect to 5ghz radio then look at connected client list. You can also learn your mac address from windows.
2. Find the mac address filtering page. Got the 5ghz section.
3. There likely will be a toggle for "allow ONLY these macs" or "BLOCK only these macs". You want block.
4. There will be a table to enter the mac address. Some routers want the : every few digits, some don't. play with it until it accepts your mac address.
5. enable the mac filter. If you are doing this via your PC connected by the 5ghz radio you will notice that you can no longer talk to the router. Your PC's roaming support should now move you to the 2.4 ghz radio. If it does not do this automatically then disconnect and reconnect.
6. If something goes wrong you will want to be able to talk to your router via an Ethernet cable so you can turn MAC filters off. A laptop is very handy for this if it has an enet port.

Good luck.

 

[MrYorkiebar]

Are you using the same SSID for the 2.4 ghz and the 5ghz? IF so the choice of 2.4ghz or 5ghz is a roaming decision. (I use different SSIDs, and then manage which frequency I use by selecting the right SSID, but you can't do this without changing the 5ghz SSID).

Likely it's 5ghx having much worse performance than 2.4 because you are at a distance where 2.4 is better than 5ghz. 5ghz degrades faster with distance and has more trouble with walls. If you use inSSIDer (free download, google it) you will be able to verify this.

If you goto Device Manager--> network--> your adapter --> properties --> advanced
Do you see a field called "roaming decision" ? (my adapter has it, not sure if all do).
If so try changing it from "auto" to "optimize distance".

Thanks. Mine had a "Preamble" selection which has options "long and short" and "long". After selecting Long it switched to the 2.4GHz channel. Not sure if it was just a coincidence but it seems to have worked

 

[tsnor]

Are you using the same SSID for the 2.4 ghz and the 5ghz? IF so the choice of 2.4ghz or 5ghz is a roaming decision. (I use different SSIDs, and then manage which frequency I use by selecting the right SSID, but you can't do this without changing the 5ghz SSID).

Likely it's 5ghx having much worse performance than 2.4 because you are at a distance where 2.4 is better than 5ghz. 5ghz degrades faster with distance and has more trouble with walls. If you use inSSIDer (free download, google it) you will be able to verify this.

If you goto Device Manager--> network--> your adapter --> properties --> advanced
Do you see a field called "roaming decision" ? (my adapter has it, not sure if all do).
If so try changing it from "auto" to "optimize distance".

Thanks. Mine had a "Preamble" selection which has options "long and short" and "long". After selecting Long it switched to the 2.4GHz channel. Not sure if it was just a coincidence but it seems to have worked

I'm somewhat surprised that the 'preamble' setting did this. Glad you are all set.