For a pretty long time I disabled 802.11a/b/g on my AP. All devices on my home network must support 802.11n or better. It isn't really an issue because 802.11n is actually really old. IIRC the presence of older 802.11a/b/g devices will cause throughout to decrease for newer devices as well.

Late last year I also stopped providing 2.4GHz for my home network. The only inconvenience so far is just a wireless printer not supporting 5GHz, so I have to print using a USB cable.

The level of inconvenience would surely be different for everyone, but in my case it's worth it.

In some countries there are no 5ghz bands that don’t legally require DFS (which can kill your network for 30 minutes or so when interference is detected) and out where I live 5ghz usually doesn’t make it across half the house (land is cheap as crap and everyone builds crazy large houses on it.)

I have to wonder what you’re even doing that needs 5ghz, I guess you’re in the city and trying to escape interference?

Yes, I live in a city (though no way as dense as NYC) and try to escape interference.

I currently have several devices that are 2.4 only, so I'm stuck. The wireless printer I can probably work around if I move it out of the closet, but the wife won't let me and I love my wife more than I love wifi. There's also two game consoles, an iPhone 4, an egg minder, an e-book reader, and an iLamp on 2.4. Probably some other stuff I don't remember off the top of my head.

For me, it would be nice if all AP's had the same power level. Currently the neighbor across the street and two houses up is putting out so much power that it drowns out my AP two rooms away.

There are mandated power levels which devices use. Some firmware allows you to ignore them.

Manually switch to a different channel, you can use even 13 if you are outside US...

> Currently the neighbor across the street and two houses up is putting out so much power that it drowns out my AP two rooms away.

Give your neighbour a dose of their own medicine: Get a directional high db antenna, set a spare WiFi AP to the same channel, and point the antenna at your neighbours house. Then set up a looping script that copies data to constantly saturate that AP.

Not that I've ever done this, or advocate anyone actually doing it... ;D

Unless actual malice is involved, the neighbor will probably just wonder why the wlan is shit and buy a "better" (stronger) one. Sounds much like a good old coordination problem to me.

Yeah, it's a basic tragedy of the commons, where the commons is noisy to begin with radio spectrum.

Unfortunately, 2.4ghz is still pretty much the only option for something like a smart lightbulb or smart plug. For the printer though, it seems like either the printer software or my router is smart enough to talk to it even though my PC is on the 5ghz SSID. But the same can't be said of the bulbs and plugs. I had to return a bunch and swap for Amazon echo smart plugs, which are also only 2.4ghz, but the echo itself is smart enough to work with them even though it too is on the 5ghz said.

Wouldn't something like Zigbee or Z-Wave better for a lightbulb or plug?

Possibly from a “BETAMAX” features point-of-view, but it’s not as pervasive as WiFi (“VHS”).

My front door lock is Zigbee only because a WiFi camera is its WiFi-to-Zigbee bridge. Everything else is WiFi.

Maybe in the future smart home stuff will convert over, but then it means one company or another will have to sell a bridge and be the gatekeeper. Perhaps the home/ISP-provided access points should include Z-Wave / Zigbee that is open to provision and configure from FAANG’s and smart home products?

Interesting.

802.11ac's ("WiFi 5") core benefit was (with enough antennas) running channels on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz and supporting devices duplexing across both channels for maximum speed/latency shaping. It made running 2.4GHz cool again, and from what I'm aware of finally solved some of the compatibility issues between 802.11a/b/g and 802.11n so that there are fewer issues with older devices.

My impression from school ages ago is that though 802.11a botched the original plan and took years to fix while 802.11b captured the market, and 802.11n mostly fixed it right, and even though 2.4 GHz is one of the noisiest bands in the modern home (microwaves, old school walkie talkies/baby monitors, parts of Bluetooth, all sorts of other random home appliances), 2.4 GHz is still the technically superior band in a lot of cases, and WiFi frequency hopping and noise avoidance have gotten really good since 802.11a.

It's interesting me to decide to ban that entire band from one's home WiFi options.

There are new Android phones sold in 2020 without 5GHz Wi-Fi support, especially some Samsung midrange ones.

Huh?

We turned off 2.4 GHz in the office three years ago without notice. This was due to a huge hotel going up next door that seems to have an AP going full blast in every room making 2.4 GHz unusable.

Nobody noticed or complained. And I know we have lots of really old Androids in use by staff.

Galaxy A10 is one.

I do something similar. I don’t run 2.4GHz.

Pain points:

* Some IOT devices, such as yeelights.

* some SBCs such as OrangePI Zeros.

* Some televisions (Sony Bravia)

If you don't mind me asking, how big is your house? What are the interior walls made from?

I live in an apartment and can't get 5Ghz signal in my bathroom which is 20 feet from the router.

Quite a few things are based around devices like the ESP32 and ESP8266 which are very much only on 2.4GHz.

I think that we'll begin moving away from that to things having their own LTE-M1 modems in them and a token data service though. We're already seeing that to some extent, where there's hot tubs (literally!) that have their own internet connections to send "telemetries" back to the operator for advertising purposes. From the consumer perspective it's "zero configuration", for the manufacturer it means that "just don't connect it to the internet" simply isn't an option anymore unless you go and tear out the LTE chip.

Routers in most homes and offices have the power budget and physical space to support multiple frequencies and protocols, so there's not much reason to give up backward compatibility unless you want a router that is either very small or very cheap. Of course the 2.4GHz band is crowded, but it won't be so bad anymore when most bandwidth-heavy devices have moved on to higher frequencies.

1. Force devices to use 5 GHz, and 2. Prevent use of inefficient older protocols which reduce overall bandwidth

> Force devices to use 5 GHz

You can force devices to use 5 GHz by having different ESSIDs for the 2.4 GHz network and the 5 GHz network. A device configured to use the home-5g network won't try to connect to the home-2g4 network, and vice versa.

I meant people, force people to use the 5 GHz band in an easy hassle-free way.

Tell that to my fridge, which only supports 2.4GHz and which I have no plan to replace in the next 10 years.

Fortunately, the fact that some devices continue to use 2.4GHz does not reduce the bandwidth I have on my other network that is 5GHz. So I have no incentive to disable 2.4GHz anytime in the next 10 years, either.

What are you using the internet access on your fridge for?

According to the manufacturer, it sends diagnostic information and receives firmware updates. I'm not entirely sure that it's not snitching on my eating habits at the same time, though.

> According to the manufacturer, [...] receives firmware updates.

Why would a fridge, which should do nothing more than turning the compressor on and off according to its inside temperature, need firmware updates?

I wonder how nobody takes this "feature" as negative. My first thought was: "My fridge doesn't need firmware updates and it does what it's supposed to do. What's wrong with this one?"

It's going to require new hardware to support the new frequency so it only makes sense that if you support the frequency it should be required you do it with the minimum protocol version being the one that was around at the time the frequency was introduced.

And yes, tri band routers will be popular as well as switchable dual band routers (i.e. you can flip between 2.4/5 or 5/6 but not both at the same time)

Yeah I've got a handful of random devices that are still just 2.4. my thermostat being the most front and center.