single vs dual band wifi cards in laptops

Wondering if there any benefits to upgrading a single band wifi card in a laptop
with a dual band if I mostly use my laptop at WIFI hotspots.
It's hard to know how many WIFI hotspots at hotels, airports and places like Starbucks are using dual band routers.
What would the benefits be of using the 5.6GHZ band at a wireless hotspot?
Probably less competition for bandwidth and perhaps a longer range (distance).

 

There are some good articles on various sites about the benefits of 5Ghz over 2.4Ghz wireless band. The one below is non technical, easy to read and delivers good comparison:
http://pocketnow.com/2014/01/23/5ghz-wifi

I hope you will find it useful

 

I've never seen any public 5Ghz networks. Public wifi can suck sometimes, but the lowest common denominator is either a lousy router or not enough bandwidth to share from the internet connection.

That article is not only non-technical, but it is nonsensical too.

 

There are some public 5Ghz wifi in UK. Some are given by certain ISP with the broadband subscription service.

What do you find nonsensical on that article?

 

With the over congested 2.4GHz band in most cities around the world choking with more and more wireless clients, BT interference, RADAR, WEATHER, microwave ovens, etc., the 5GHz band offers these benefits:

More wifi channels vs. 2.4GHz offers more choice to find a 'clean' channel for each router and it's users.

While 5GHz Class A and Class N devices offer small performance improvements with the latest AC Class routers; an all AC Class client / router setup effectively speeds up the wireless performance of the network so many more clients can be used and with less lag too.

With MU-MIMO enabled clients and routers (still waiting...), which is only available on the AC 5GHz band, WiFi will (for downloads only) finally become less of an 1990's hub and more like a modern switch... Yeah; we're talking full duplex operation (again; downloads only) for the first time. Hopefully, we may see this before the year is out.

This will be limited by the number of streams/antenna the router has (up to 8 spec'd so far) and the number of antenna the client devices have. So, with an 8 antenna router and 8 single antenna devices, uploads to the router will still be half duplex (one client at a time...), but downloads can happen to all clients in one time slice.


The 5GHz band nominally has less range than the 2.4GHz band. That is taking into consideration the signal's obstacle penetrating abilities. But as most WiFi hotspots have the AP in a visible/line of sight location, this shouldn't be an issue.


To conclude, OP, it is not simply dual band cards that you should be looking for.

I recommend an AC dual band solution (like the Intel AC7260).

See:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX54420

 

We also have subscription-based wifi services here in Shanghai, and a couple of times I have seen the networks on the 5Ghz band, but that isn't exactly public wifi.

Everything?

There was a big difference. 802.11a cards were more expensive and could operate at 54Mbps. 802.11b cards were cheaper and could operate at 11Mbps. Think about how at the time the average internet connection speed was 56kbps and that is all you need to know about 802.11a and 802.11b adoption rates. However, business went solidly for 802.11a because it offered much better performance in an environment with a faster internet connection (T1, T3) and lots of computers on the network at once. 802.11b couldn't handle it as well, but it was also better at going through walls, which is more of a deal in the home.

Wrong, but the answer will come later.

What in the world? 802.11a and 802.11b came out at the same time. The author even alluded to this at the beginning, but now they are saying that 802.11b was developed AFTER 802.11a? Nonsense. Like I said before, 802.11a was naturally better for corporate users, and 802.11b was naturally better for home users. I remember that my mom's work laptop had 802.11a and I was jealous because our home network used 802.11b.

Inexpensive? 802.11g was pretty expensive when it came out. It offered the same speed of 802.11a, the signal could travel a little further, but by far most importantly it was completely compatible with existing 802.11b devices, which already had the lion's share of the market.

That is not normal.

Oh dear. Bluetooth is very low power, range, and bandwidth. Yes, it can theoretically interfere, but it is unlikely to be noticeable in all but the most extreme of circumstances.

Finally something that makes sense. Beside saying that 802.11n is 600Mbps, there are no other problems here.

Not sure why the author still can't figure out the actual bandwidth. Kind of strange though that after all this 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz talk, the author completely fails to mention that 802.11ac is 5Ghz only.

It is true that there is a lot less noise and interference on 5Ghz. However, most 2.4Ghz devices usually aren't causing much havoc to the wireless network. It is entirely possible, but it just isn't likely. However, the author does mention taking advantage of reduced noise. They are right, but based on their lack of knowledge of the subject, I think it is completely by accident. To get the full wireless AC speeds requires very wide and very clean channels. Wireless N doesn't require this, but to get such high throughput necessitates that the bands it is working on be extremely clean and free of any other noise.

What other mysterious reasons are there that the author thinks we are too stupid to comprehend? Also, there is no guarantee that using 5Ghz on a compatible device will help anything at all. In many cases, performance will be worse because much less hardware operates as well at 5Ghz as it does at 2.4Ghz. Unless you are using the best wireless routers and the best wireless chipsets in the devices, and there is lots of competing 2.4Ghz interference, then any benefit to 5Ghz is unlikely.

This isn't true at all unless you are transferring data from one wireless device on to another wireless device using different networks.

Ah, so a drawback in range is suddenly something awesome! Way to spin it in the favor of 5Ghz.

I thought that 2.4Ghz noise was the main issue on my home network so I bought a wireless AC router. I also have two good 5Ghz cars, the Atheros AR9380 and the Intel 7260AC. Well, what do you know, the new router fixed all of my 2.4Ghz issues! I live in a high-rise apartment building and there is a ton of 2.4Ghz interference, but somehow my 2.4Ghz network manages to do just fine. Here are some inssider screenshots:

 

As anything in Laptop it is better to have a dual band then a single band wifi just the same if you can get the laptop that comes with AC wifi get that as that is future proof. Along with this your home network will have a dual band router so this is where having dual band wifi comes into play for connection speeds will better be improved and security. Places still are 2.4 because it is the most common and least expensive wifi setup to have and those with dual band setups - I seen are library as my laptop connects at higher then 54mbs at 270mpbs speed and they use Cisco routers. So they are going dual band but is comes down to cost to the company making the upgrades. But most institutions I know are moving towards dual band router for speed and connection reliabilities and better security.

 

Dual band routers may offer better speed, sure.

Connection reliability and better security has nothing to do with the number of bands though.

That is a function of the router's capabilities and performance.