Centrino 6300 Ultimate-N. Is it dual-band?

The documentation the Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 states "Dual-band frequency" being:

• Enables connectivity to 2.4 GHz frequency for access to older 802.11b/g networks
• Enables connectivity to 5.0 GHz frequency for higher speeds and greater network capacity

... but does it do both simultaneously?

There is other jargon along the lines of

I'm looking to buy an access point to best match the 6300 card in my laptop, but I'm wondering if the "dual-band" moniker is just spin for it can do both depending on what is available (not what I understand to be true Wireles-N dual-band).... this is just like the Linksys WAP610N that is labled dual-band but can do either 2.4Ghz *or* 5GHz but not both at the same time. Compare this to the WRT610N that does offer simultaneous dual-band.

I guess the question is really is spending the extra for a router/access point with simultanous 2.4+5 GHz dualband a waste of time for the Centrino 6300 Ultimate-N .. or not...?

 

Dual band only matters for the router. The reason you want dual band is some wifi cannot do 5GHz. So by allowing both simultaneously you make sure more wifi adapter can work with the router. There is no reason for the wifi adapter to do both simultaneously as you will only be connecting to 1 access point at a time.

 

No. There are dual-band adapters that maintain simultaneous 5GHz and 2.4Ghz streams and use the full bandwidth of both. ie transfer files on one stream and voip on the other at the same time.

e.g. WNDA3100 - RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N USB 2.0 Adapter

I'm trying to find out if the 6300 "Ultimate-N" is like this.

 

I don't see anywhere in the specs that says the WNDA3100 is a simultaneous dual band adapter.

As for the Intel 6300, it is dual band, but not simultaneous. I'm currently using the 6300 on my laptop with a Linksys WRT610N simultaneous dual band router. You can either connect with a 2.4 or 5 GHz connection, but not both at the same time. If you want your laptop to connect into 2 bands with the same router, you'll need to use another wifi adapter such as the Netgear you listed and connect your laptop with your internal wifi card + wifi adapter.

 

I don't think there are any wireless cards that run on both bands simultaneously nor are there any routers that support this.

 

There are no simultaneous dual band adapters and most likely it's gonna stay that way. If you look at a simultaneous dual band router you can see that it has two separate radios- one for 2.4GHz and one for 5GHz. Each radio can be capable of dual band on its own but one radio can work only at one frequency at a time so to keep both frequencies running you need two radio chips (i.e. already mentioned WRT610N has two Broadcoms BCM4322)
You would need a Wi-Fi card with two radio chips as well and this is not gonna happen.

 

Thanks for clearing that up...

So in all the dual-band router marketing spin when they say you can simultaneously transfer gobs of files on one band, while voiping on another at the same time they really mean from a network of multiple computers rather than from a single notebook!