if you're using an 802.11 network there are a number of technical specifications that you need to be aware of one is the frequency in use you may have already seen in the 802.11 standards video that there are many standards that use the 2.4 gigahertz range and other standards that use the 5 gigahertz range and some of them use both of those ranges to be able to communicate you also have to keep in mind that there are separate channels within those frequency ranges that can be used these are groups of frequencies and the ieee has assigned numbers to these frequencies so that we can much easier refer to which channel we happen to be using that's why we often say if you're using multiple access points in a particular area you may want to make sure each of the access points is running on a different wireless channel and depending on where you are in the world there's probably a governmental agency that's responsible for managing the wireless spectrum or the frequencies that you would use for these 802.11 networks these regulations often dictate exactly which frequency should be used they'll specify the maximum amount of power that can be used on those networks and they'll set requirements and limits over how much interference can be caused by these 802.11 networks we often see the 2.4 gigahertz and 5 gigahertz networks compared with 802.11 but i thought it'd be nice to see a visual representation of why the 5 gigahertz networks are so popular let's start with 2.4 gigahertz networks these are the networks commonly seen as ieees channels 1 6 and 11 and these are three separate 20 megahertz bandwidths that range from 2412 megahertz through 24.82 megahertz and that's where we get the 2.4 gigahertz band information these are the only channels available in 2.4 gigahertz as you can see there are three to choose from and if you're in an apartment complex with mini 802.11 wireless networks you'll easily find a lot of activity on all three of those channels because of these limitations for 2.4 gigahertz we had to find some other available frequencies to use so we started using the 5 gigahertz spectrum everything that is on this 5 gigahertz list that is not red can be used to communicate so you can see there are many more 20 megahertz channels available on a 5 gigahertz spectrum than there ever was on 2.4 gigahertz this allows you to easily find some available spectrum in your area especially if there are a lot of access points being used simultaneously you may be using larger bandwidths than 20 megahertz to communicate because you can get much better throughput that way so it may not be 20 megahertz channels that you're choosing it may be a 40 megahertz bandwidth and 80 megahertz bandwidth or the current largest 160 megahertz bandwidth you can see when you get to 160 megahertz that there are really two separate non-contiguous areas available to be able to communicate at such a large bandwidth not only do we often use these 802.11 wireless networks we also extensively use bluetooth networks this effectively removes the wires from our peripherals that we connect to our mobile devices so if you're using a headset if you have a set of external speakers or you have an external keyboard that you use on your computer it's probably using bluetooth to communicate bluetooth also uses the 2.4 gigahertz band the part of 2.4 gigahertz it uses is the unlicensed ism part of the band that stands for industrial scientific and medical this is an area of the 2.4 gigahertz band that doesn't require you to get any special licensing from the government anyone can use these particular frequencies and that's why bluetooth and 802.11 commonly use the 2.4 gigahertz band bluetooth devices generally only communicate in a small area around you we often refer to this as a personal area network because of that so most of the headsets and other devices you'll use will probably operate to about 10 meters in distance if you're an environment that uses industrial bluetooth there are additional standards available that can increase that distance to over 100 meters but if you're using consumer devices you're probably not using a 100 meter distance between you and your headset instead we can use the bluetooth standards that limit that to about 10 meters