Why don’t old devices see the Wi-Fi 5 GHZ from the ASUS RT-AC58U router?

Hello! I bought a new dual-band router ASUS with external antennas and in the range of 5 GHz his old devices 2014.v. do not see it! Only the new ones! And the old ones only work in 2.4 GHz mode! What can be done so that they can see it and work in it! There, probably, the channels are not so clogged, and it is more powerful it seems. Thanks!

Answer

Hello, it’s very simple. Old devices (more precisely, their built-in Wi-Fi modules) at the hardware level do not support Wi-Fi network at 5 GHz. They simply can’t see it, because the modules don’t support this range.

There is nothing you can do here. However, if by “old devices” you mean a laptop or PC, you can buy external USB Wi-Fi adapters that support 5 GHz and the 802.11ac standard. I wrote about such adapters here. And if you have, for example, a phone or a tablet that doesn’t see the Wi-Fi network from Asus RT-AC58U at 5 GHz, then you can only put up with it and connect at 2.4 GHz or buy new devices.

I also advise you to look at the characteristics of your devices on the Internet to make sure that they don’t support the new wi-fi standard.

And another article on this topic: why a laptop, smartphone, or tablet does not see Wi-Fi network 5 GHz.