Firstly, apologies if this is in the incorrect forum - the networking forum seems to have vanished from DS?

Anyway, I currently have a D-Link 615 router, connected to my Virgin Media Superhub (the version before the Superhub 2). The D-Link works fine however, with SO many wifi devices in my house (6 iDevices, 1 wifi printer, 1 laptop, and 3 game consoles), the D-Link is often quite slow or becomes stuck (i.e. nothing will connect to it until I reboot it).

I have a 100Mb cable connection with Virgin, however, speed tests run on my iPad Air 2 (over wifi), often show results as low as 15mb to 30mb download speeds and 6mb upload.

Anyway, I am considering getting one of these:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-RT-N66...ct_top?ie=UTF8

...and my question is regarding the 2ghz and 5ghz frequencies which this can work on.

Do these frequencies work at the same time from the router or do I need to select one over the other, to use on the router?

You mean either the Broadband forum
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=77

or the Computing forum
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=40



Both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands work together. Give them different SSID names and then select whichever band works best on whatever device you are using. NB not everything supports 5GHz so some devices may have no option but to use 2.4GHz.

Mind you if I was paying for 100 megabits/sec and the speed dropped down to 15 to 30 millibits/sec I'd be looking for more than a new router!

Seriously though. Never do speed tests over WiFi always use a cable connection to the router to eliminate issues with WiFi. Also make sure you get the case of the M's and B's right. If you really meant 15MB download then that is entirely consistent with a 100Mb connection as 1 B = 8 b's so 100Mb/s = 12.5MB/s. Can be confusing to the uninitiated as ISPs use megabits (Mb) to measure speeds and downloads are often measured in megabytes (MB).

..,.yea, I did mean MB - forgot to capitalize the letters!!!

So 15MB to 30MB download speeds is fine for a 100MB cable connection?

What if I name both the 2GHz and 5GHz with the same SSID, will the compatible devices that are able to connect to the 5GHz band, actually connect to it (I have an Xbox One, which I think can use the 5GHz band. Its in the same room as the router. Also, I think my iPad Air 2 is 5GHz compatible)?

Broadband speeds are measured by the ISPs in Mb/s, ie megabits per second. You will hardly ever (likely never) see them advertised in MB/s ie megabytes per second.

Places like Speedtest.net and web browsers tend to display downloads in MB/s

100Mb/s equates to 12.5MB/s so you would be very unlikely to see a 30MB/s download. 30Mb/s though is possible and could be a limitation of whatever WiFi standard you are using. That is one reason why it is advisable to use a cable connection to the router to do a speed test if you are checking what speed your broadband connection is achieving.

Obviously if you really do want to check the WiFi performance then use WiFi.

That is why it is important to get the case of the letters correct. Otherwise no one has any idea what you are talking about.


It would save a lot of hassle to give them different names so you know for certain which one you are connecting to. You could name them DEANS24 and DEANS5 for example to indicate which band is which.

There is no guarantee that a device will auto connect to a 5GHz connection in preference to 2.4GHz or vice versa. So better to eliminate any doubt and make it obvious what you are connecting to.

I just did another speed test using a speed test app on my iPad Air 2 (Speedtest.net) and the results were the following:

Download: 68 Mbps
Upload: 6 Mbps
Ping: 7 Ms

I guess these are pretty good results then, based on a wifi connection?!

So going back to my original post - would that router I linked to, provide a better & faster wifi connection than the D-Link?