I have a Realtek RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n on my Quantal amd64 system. I installed the kernel modules for that card and modprobe that module. I can only view to the 2.4GHz WLANs. The module Im talking about was downloaded from the realtek page.

Here is some good info. Well my configuration.

2 Answers

The Realtek RTL8188CE WLAN adapter is designed to connect to a IEEE 802.11b/g/n communication protocol. This protocol is available for both the 2.4, and the 5.0 GHz frequency band. However according to the hardware specifications this adapter like many other "802.11n" adapters only supports the 2.4 GHz band:

  • Complete 802.11n solution for 2.4GHz band Realtek

To be able to connect to signals in the 5.0 GHz band you need to have an adapter supporting this. These usually are named as "dual-band" or similar.

1

Not all N cards support 5GHz. This one doesn't.

A clue is the fact that it is labelled with B and G but not A. Of the standards older than N, B and G both used the 2.4GHz band while A used the 5GHz band. N cards supporting both bands are often labeled as supporting A/B/G/N, whereas N cards supporting only 2.4GHz are often labeled as B/G/N.

The newer standard AC also uses the 5GHz band. Only N supports both bands, with mandatory 2.4GHz support and optional 5GHz support. So if a device supports AC and N that should mean it supports N on both bands.