NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.

Forum Discussion

ReidJoy's avatar
ReidJoy
Follower
Mar 09, 2022

Nighthawk MR5200 - Can you disable 5GHz Band?..

Is there a way to disable one of the Wi-Fi bands on the Nighthawk M5? Specifically the 5GHz band in this case?

I can find the instructions in the user guide of how to turn off the Wi-Fi altogether for tethering, but can one of the individual wireless bands be disabled while leaving the other band running.

 

I work for a Trimble dealer providing GPS equipment for Surveyors and all of our customers still using the Trimble TSC3 data collector are having to transition to Wi-Fi hotspots for internet in the field. The TSC3 debuted in 2012, runs Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional, and are 3G devices. We are finding that the TSC3 will work fine with the previous Nighthawk MR5100 and we purchased a pile of them for our own rental fleet, but our customers trying to purchase a Nighthawk now are getting the newer MR5200 instead and the TSC3 is simply unable to detect it.

 

This may be a hardware limitation due to the decade-plus-old design of the TSC3, but I'm hoping running a hotspot as 2.4GHz ONLY can be a workaround.

 

-Reid

2 Replies

  • michaelkenward's avatar
    michaelkenward
    Guru
    Mar 10, 2022
    ReidJoy wrote:

    Is there a way to disable one of the Wi-Fi bands on the Nighthawk M5? Specifically the 5GHz band in this case?

    Why do you want to do this?

     

    Is this the issue?

     


    I work for a Trimble dealer providing GPS equipment for Surveyors and all of our customers still using the Trimble TSC3 data collector are having to transition to Wi-Fi hotspots for internet in the field.

    If the challenge is to get things to connect to 2.4 GHz, then there is no point in disabling 5 GHz. The devices won't see it.

     

    The "turm off 5 GHz" issue crops up regularly throughout this community. (I don't recall seeing it in this section before.) It is usually down to badly written software for setting up IoT devices.

     

    When people try to set up these widgets, they are forced to use a mobile phone. If that connects to 5 GHz wifi, then it cannot see the IoT things on 2.4 GHz.

     

    If it isn't possible to temporarily disable 5 GHz, on Orbi Mesh systems for example, there are ways to get around this, usually forcing the phone to connect to 2.4 GHz. But the real solution is to get the people who wrote the system to recognise the 2.4 GHz things on the network.

     

    Apologies for not providing the answer you want. Maybe someone else can do that. But in the long run it might be more satisfactory to tackle the root of the problem rather than playing with workarounds.