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I have the

03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 2200 (rev c4) 

How do I find out if that card/driver support 5 GHz?

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3 Answers 3

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Find out the interface name, by running iwconfig

$ iwconfig eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"EvanCarroll" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: D8:50:E6:44:B2:C8 Bit Rate=19.5 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=61/70 Signal level=-49 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:1 Invalid misc:80 Missed beacon:0 

In this case it is wlan0, then run iwlist <interface> freq,

$ iwlist wlan0 freq wlan0 13 channels in total; available frequencies : Channel 01 : 2.412 GHz Channel 02 : 2.417 GHz Channel 03 : 2.422 GHz Channel 04 : 2.427 GHz Channel 05 : 2.432 GHz Channel 06 : 2.437 GHz Channel 07 : 2.442 GHz Channel 08 : 2.447 GHz Channel 09 : 2.452 GHz Channel 10 : 2.457 GHz Channel 11 : 2.462 GHz Channel 12 : 2.467 GHz Channel 13 : 2.472 GHz Current Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6) 

None of these channels are outside of 2.4 GHz. It does not support 5 GHz.

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    It'd be nice if you also showed how to do this with the iw tool as well. I think the others are possibly considered obsolete... Commented Jun 18, 2014 at 18:45
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    right. iw phy shows detailed capabilities. beside of this you may also find wifi cards that are capable of 5ghz, but the driver isn't. Commented Jun 18, 2014 at 19:24
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    and does this means the Linux driver does not support it or the card itself does not? Or to rephrase it: can this mean the driver simply does not support it? Commented May 18, 2016 at 6:39
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    @DanieleSegato I am unsure of how to answer that. The whole thing is predicated on there being a card with specific bands not supported by driver. That may exist. However, it sounds theoretical and it's another question. Commented May 18, 2016 at 21:36
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    @colotiline it is totally possibly your wifi driver itself doesn't support 5ghz. I would be interesting in knowing your output to LSPCI, you should ask another question about that. specifically, "does <card> support 5ghz in linux" Commented Jul 17, 2018 at 20:05
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If you're trying to discover what your card supports, iw phy is a nice solution with a lot more information (including supported bands).

iwlist is showing more what's available and/or allowed in your locale, what was disabled due to DFS channels, etc., not what your device supports. From the iwlist man page:

 freq[uency]/channel Give the list of available frequencies in the device and the number of defined channels. Please note that usually the driver returns the total number of channels and only the frequencies available in the present locale, so there is no one-to-one mapping between frequencies displayed and channel numbers. 
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When running iwconfig you will get the following possible information:

  1. IEEE 802.11bgn = 2.4 GHz only
  2. IEEE 802.11gn = 2.4 GHz only
  3. IEEE 802.11agn = 2.4 GHz + 5 GHz
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    That's simply factually incorrect, as 802.11n /can/ support 5ghz, even though it isn't require to support 5ghz by the spec. Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 20:10

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