Pi3 B+ force onboard wifi to 5G?

1st Official Post

    Hi,

    Is it possible to tell the onboard wifi module in the Pi 3 B+ to only connect on 5G? (disable 2.4G radio?)

    And for my 8812au 5G wifi dongle I had to disable power management, does this work for the new wifi chip as well?

    8812au rtw_power_mgnt=0

    If you only associate with the 5GHz SSID then the Pi3+ won't connect on 2.4GHz. I'm not sure how (or if it's possible) to disable only the 2.4GHz radio.

    Quote from SkywalkerPD

    And for my 8812au 5G wifi dongle I had to disable power management, does this work for the new wifi chip as well?

    Power management is disabled by default - it's not a battery powered device.

    Code
    [  291.767088] brcmfmac: power management disabled
    Quote from milhouse

    If you only associate with the 5GHz SSID then the Pi3+ won't connect on 2.4GHz. I'm not sure how (or if it's possible) to disable only the 2.4GHz radio.

    Power management is disabled by default - it's not a battery powered device.

    Code
    [  291.767088] brcmfmac: power management disabled

    Thnx for the reply Milhouse! I have a mesh network in my home and this uses only one SSID. So it switches between 2.4G and 5G when it finds it necessary.... It would be nice, to block this for my LibreELEC media player.

    Is it possible to use something like this?

    Selection of WIFI band

    Edited once, last by SkywalkerPD (March 22, 2018 at 10:20 AM).

    • Official Post

    I'm not a major wireless expert, but the essence of the problem is that if the 5GHz connection persistently shows the better connection it will be used. If it does not, and it persistently falls back to 2.4GHz, the solution is to fix radio coverage so 5GHz is superior, not forcing the driver to hold onto the inferior connection.

    First of all, I agree with that. The wifi in my house has an optimal coverage (for my situation) Before I was using a 5G dongle, the wifi in the new Pi 3 B+ has both modes, and now it switches a lot.

    I can go back to using an external dongle, but that is based on the rtl8812au chipset and LibreELEC is still not fully supporting this. So I have to do a lot of manual stuff to get that working stable.

    I bought the new Pi because it has native 5G, but unfortunately it is not really working for me at the moment, so I'm searching for a workaround.

    For now I'm back on my 5G only dongle. Couldn't get my Pi 3 B+ to connect to 5G only/stable. Kept searching and switching. With the external dongle it connects to 5G only. Until now the most stable connection.