Wi Fi - Can there be Two?

Hi.

I have built-in Wi Fi with my HP Envy desktop PC; I also have a NetGear WNDA3100 Wi Fi, connected by USB. Both of them connect to our Wi Fi.

The cable installer, when he updated our router, pointed out that we now have both a normal Wi Fi and a 5G Wi Fi, so I thought I'd have the HP Envy's built-in connect to the former, and the NetGear connect to the latter.

- Does this make any sense, or am I causing a conflict?
- If this is okay to do, are there any specific settings I need to use, to avoid problems?

Thank you, for your help and advice, and Happy New Year!

-a.

 

Windows 8 upwards can use any number of internet connections simultaneously. You don't have to do anything.

 

Most likely the "normal WiFi" is the 2.4Ghz band and the other is 5Ghz. I live in a retirement community and our provider broadcasts both bands. The lower band is primarily for the older "b" through "n" technologies and the 5Ghz is used to broadcast the newer "ac" technology which can be 3 to 4 times or more faster than n. Many of the computer and router manufacturers are building in the ac technology now but most of the equipment in use today is n or older. So even if you get a new computer with ac technology, it does you no good unless the provider is broadcasting ac - and not too many are doing that yet. And if you are receiving the ac broadcast, it is backward compatible to the older technologies.

Using the "ac" technology, I am getting up to 150 Mb on both the download and upload. But frankly, unless you are streaming high definition video (which operates well at 30 to 40Mb) or moving huge files, that speed is wasted - at least for me it is.

Before submitting this post, I ran another Speedtest and got 140 down and 160 up.

 

Thank you both.

Before posting my question, I had begun getting 'warnings' of a conflict in Wi Fi but even after looking at the settings, I found nothing to be considered a conflict.

It sounds as if I should set both to the 5g setting, if I am going to continue using both the internal and external adapters.

Again, my thanks and Happy New Year to you all!

-a.

 

Could be an IP address conflict (using the same subnet)

 

That does make sense.

Thanks very much. I will check it. Since then, I did reboot - always fixes those pesky little gotchas - and haven't gotten the conflict message since. But it is worth looking into.

Thanks very much,
-a.

 

Happy New Year to All on WindowsBBS, with my thanks for all your help this past year.

AlexH

 

Thanks very much! That makes the most sense.

This started out because we live in an area where there is only one game in town, a cable company called Brighthouse. Their Internet connectivity is, at times, spotty and never lives up to the speed they tell us we should be getting.

Having come from NJ where we had FiOS - expensive, yes, but at times breathtakingly fast - I had to add the external Wi Fi adapter, from NetGear, to be sure that at least one of them, the HP internal Broadcom adapter, or the NetGear adapter, would keep me connected.

They've given us a new router and the Internet stays up a higher percentage of the time now, so I suppose I can remove the external NetGear.

Simply put - I just don't trust it.

But knowing that the two of them, even one on the normal speed and the other on the 5G speed, will not increase my overall Internet connection speed, makes it easier to take one off.

I recently got an announcement from NetGear about their "Nighthawk" router, and cannot help wonder if this will work better than the one Brighthouse supplied. As long as I've been working in IT - more than 30 years - I know my limitations and networking is one of them. I simply don't know enough to be able to know if a third party router will work in place of the one I have now.

So again, I'll stick with what's working, and start thinking about removing the external NetGear Wi Fi.

Thank you very much,
-a.