March 16, 2014 at 3:10 PM
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Michele Mottini
Recently I switched from a Dell Latitude to a Surface 2 Pro. The Dell always reported excellent WiFi signal strength (all bars) whereas the Surface reported only good connection (2/3 bars). Testing the network speed I was getting 8+ Mbps download with the Dell and around 5 Mbps with the Surface.
I have a Linksys E2500 dual-band router. Apparently the Dell laptop uses the 5 GHz band, whereas the Surface uses the slower 2.4 GHz one. I solved the problem changing the router configuration so that it publishes two different network – one for each frequency, and then connected explicitly the Surface to the 5 GHz network.
In this way the download speed went up and it is now similar to the Dell laptop one.
I am still getting a reported poorer signal from the Surface than from the Dell, and I am not 100% sure that the network speed is actually the same.