How Many Bands

[Donut417]

https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-Considers-59-GHz-Band-for-Gigabit-WiFi-136129

 

So now they want 5.9 Ghz for WiFi. How many bands are routers going to have. We have 2.4, 5, 5.9 and 60. According to what I read a few weeks ago by 2018 900Mhz will be added to the mix. Just seems like a lot of wireless radios in one product. 

[TheKDub]

I knew about 2.4GHz and 5GHz, but not anything about 60GHz..

 

And damn, now 5.9GHz...

[brwainer]

Here's a direct quote from your source:

 

 

It’s adjacent to an existing band of unlicensed spectrum in 5725-5825 MHz.

The "5GHz" on routers today is really 5.8GHz, but the .8 is dropped for convenience. If this went through, all you would see is new routers say something like "5GHz extended" or "5GHz Plus" or some other marketing term like that, to distinguish between products that support only the original 5GHz spectrum from the ones that also support the additional 75MHz added on to the end.

[vanished]

Maybe in the far future every wireless technology can work together so we'll stop having radio and tv and wifi and cellphone and bluetooth, etc bands and just have one massive band for all communication

[Donut417]

I knew about 2.4GHz and 5GHz, but not anything about 60GHz..

And damn, now 5.9GHz...

60Ghz is for 802.11AD which just got release this year. I think TPlink is the first to show case one of these routers. I think they had one at CES.

[LAwLz]

The "5GHz" on routers today is really 5.8GHz, but the .8 is dropped for convenience. If this went through, all you would see is new routers say something like "5GHz extended" or "5GHz Plus" or some other marketing term like that, to distinguish between products that support only the original 5GHz spectrum from the ones that also support the additional 75MHz added on to the end.

I disagree.

We don't drop the .8GHz for convenience. The reason we say 5GHz WiFi is because the WiFi spectrum starts at 5170MHz (channel 36, the lowest channel allowed in most of the world) and goes to 5835MHz (channel 165, highest channel currently allowed in the US). We call it 5GHz because it covers most of the 5GHz spectrum. Calling it by the highest allowed frequency be silly when there is such a big difference between the highest and lowest frequency.

I guess it could make sense to call it the middle frequency, but then it would be 5.5GHz.

[brwainer]

I disagree.

We don't drop the .8GHz for convenience. The reason we say 5GHz WiFi is because the WiFi spectrum starts at 5170MHz (channel 36, the lowest channel allowed in most of the world) and goes to 5835MHz (channel 165, highest channel currently allowed in the US). We call it 5GHz because it covers most of the 5GHz spectrum. Calling it by the highest allowed frequency be silly when there is such a big difference between the highest and lowest frequency.

I guess it could make sense to call it the middle frequency, but then it would be 5.5GHz.

Ah my confusion then. I have in fact seen poeple call it 5.8GHz, but maybe they were talking about the specific channel they were using. I hadn't looked up the actual MHz frequencies of 5GHz wifi before, I only know then by heart for 2.4GHz. I was purely going by the article, were it said 5.725-5.825GHz.

[Donut417]

I think some cordless phones used 5.8Ghz. Which is what you might have been thinking.