Sky Broadband - old Dell laptop wont pick up wifi on SKy router

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Anse

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#320131 9-Jul-2025 15:14

Hi Upgraded the grandparents to Sky Broadband. All devices work except for Gran's laptop. Dell Inspiron 5558??? Picks up other wifi but not the Sky router.

Tried finding a driver update but no luck. Its probably too old. Would a third part wifi usb adapter solve the problem????

thanks

yitz

2074 posts

Uber Geek

#3392456 9-Jul-2025 15:21

You could log into the new router and make sure the Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz band is set to 1, 6 or 11. Maybe it is set to auto and broadcasting on band 13 or something which the Inspiron 5558 laptop cannot pick up. Other devices may be on the 5 GHz band or able to use the extra channels like 12 or 13 or 2.4 GHz.

bfginger

1267 posts

Uber Geek

#3392486 9-Jul-2025 17:35

To explain this the legal 2.4GHz and 5GHz wifi channels differ between countries and different devices sold in NZ observe different sets of restrictions. So if the router is wandering into zones prohibited by a receiving device it may become invisible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

Another issue is by default routers may tell devices to treat 2.4Ghz and 5GHz as one network, causing intermittent dropouts as 5GHz doesn't travel well over distance or through walls. This option should be disabled unless the serviced area is suitably compact.

ISPs could prevent many support headaches if their routers had better default wifi settings.

JemS

47 posts

Geek

ID Verified

#3392495 9-Jul-2025 18:36

Also check that the wifi password authentication is not set to wpa3 only.

rprosser

35 posts

Geek

#3392497 9-Jul-2025 19:24

Or possibly the older laptop will only handle WEP or basic WAP encryption?.

yitz

2074 posts

Uber Geek

#3392504 9-Jul-2025 19:56

rprosser:

Or possibly the older laptop will only handle WEP or basic WAP encryption?.

It's a model from 2015 not 2005 lol

KiwiSurfer

1449 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#3392513 9-Jul-2025 20:51

bfginger

Another issue is by default routers may tell devices to treat 2.4Ghz and 5GHz as one network, causing intermittent dropouts as 5GHz doesn't travel well over distance or through walls. This option should be disabled unless the serviced area is suitably compact.

This is never an issue in reality. I use mixed 2.4/5 networks all the time at home/work/family/friends/etc and it just works. Mixed 2.4/5 using the same SSID is the default for a reason -- it works best as it allows devices to use 5GHz where it works and fallback to 2.4 GHz when needed.

nztim

3812 posts

Uber Geek

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Trusted

TEAMnetwork

Subscriber

#3392620 10-Jul-2025 09:00

KiwiSurfer:

it works best as it allows devices to use 5GHz where it works and fallback to 2.4 GHz when needed.

Correct band steering has been around for years

For all the people talking about encryption, the laptop would see the SSID just not authenticate

The most likely thing is the radio in the Dell laptop like one poster said does not support Channel 13/14 and the router is likely broadcasting on that

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Equinox IT

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yitz

2074 posts

Uber Geek

#3392663 10-Jul-2025 11:32

Could also be that it's not broadcasting on 2.4 GHz at all and you have to manually turn it on because they know 5 GHz gives people faster speeds.