Can I make my network adapter prefer the 5 GHz band?

I have an ancient Asus Z71A laptop (Pentium M, 915GM chipset). I have Windows 10 pro x86 running just fine on it. Yes, the old laptop is slow, but it works!

I disabled the built-in wifi and added a dual band AE3000 USB wifi adapter. For various reasons, I have my router/AP setup using a single SSID for both 2.4 and 5 GHz radios.

Is there any way to make the adapter prefer the 5GHz band? I know I can separate the SSIDs and then manually choose the 5 GHz band, but I'd like to keep the single SSID and make the adapter automatically choose the 5 GHz band when available.

I have not found a way to make this happen yet and am hopeful that I've simply overlooked a setting somewhere.

Thanks!

I'm sure you already checked your adapter options under the General> Advanced tab; however, some wireless adapters do offer a "prefer 5G" option (mine does) and that might work if available. The other thought would be to change your adapter preference to an option that is only available in 5G (like 802.11ac only). However, your router must be set to permit 802.11ac as well. Other than those two, I would rather set up a unique SSID for each band. Good luck with your search for a solution.

aardvark

Yes. Under the AE3000 adapter properties/advanced tab, there is a property named Prefer 5g and when I highlight it, its value is enabled. Is that in itself sufficient to have the adapter prefer 5g?

i just updated the adapter driver this morning and I think the prefer 5g option was not there prior to the update. So maybe that's all I need. The preference has to occur on the client side as I understand it.

Edit: I've experimented with both common and unique SSIDs for the radios in my router and AP. I've had mixed results using a common SSID but otoh, a common SSID is much easier to deal with for non techies in the family. That is, as long as the clients aren't sticky. We have a mix of Windows laptops, iPads, iPhones, and my lone Android phone so I have a mix of n and AC devices.

There have been interesting discussions over at smallnetworkbuilders on this subject and it's not as black and white as I would like it to be.

You can download wifiinfoview from nirsoft to check which frequency your laptop adapter is actually using:

which driver do u use, because my ae3000 is also using both 2.4 and 5 ghz, even if the 5ghz is very stable and powerfull, it sometimes connect to 2.4 ghz (which is unstable because many networks is near )

You can download wifiinfoview from nirsoft to check which frequency your laptop adapter is actually using:

Thanks. I'll take a look at that utility.

which driver do u use, because my ae3000 is also using both 2.4 and 5 ghz, even if the 5ghz is very stable and powerfull, it sometimes connect to 2.4 ghz (which is unstable because many networks is near )

I picked up 5.1.25.0 this morning for Windows 10 here: