My university has wifi routers that support both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. My Asus laptop is 802.11b Preamble, therefore I can use only 2.4 GHz. It is too slow to use university wifi. My other friends has wifi adapters that support 5GHz frequency in their laptops, thus they have better connection speed than me
How can I upgrade my laptop to use 5GHz wifi without changing any internal devices? Can I use a wifi adapter to speed up my internet? After using a wifi adapter can I use 5GHz frequency like my other friends?
71 Answer
What frequency bands you can use is determined mostly by the physical radio transmitter/receiver on your Wi-Fi adapter. The rest of the computer doesn't matter at all. When you buy a new Wi-Fi adapter (whether internal or USB), it will have its own radio – that's the whole point.
Note that the frequency band isn't the only factor – the standard revision also matters (802.11 a/b < g < n < ac < ax), features such as MIMO also contribute to the overall maximum speed.
So buy a USB Wi-Fi adapter that supports 802.11ac if you want best performance, or at least 802.11a+b+g+n as the bare minimum. (The combination of a + n indicates 5 GHz support, while n on its own doesn't... but I assume most products will simply have "2.4 & 5 GHz" written on the box.)
