Trouble connecting to N band

I have a 4th gen dual band airport extreme. It works flawlessly with Apple TV and HD content from services like netflix. I can see what band and throughput every device uses via my ipad. I could never get the WDTV to connect on N. It was showing 1 mbps on G band and that is way too slow to stream 1080 gopro videos from a network drive. Some devices were on the N band, including the media server. Devices and the router decide, so it was hard to isolate.

I had a second b/g/n gig router so i hooked it up and created an N only network at 5mhz. No G option at all. Old G devices could not see this router. My N capable server had no problem. New ipads and a Surface tablet had no problem.

The clincher? When i went to the WDTV network page (after doing a full reboot) under Setup it also could not see the new router. When i reconfigured the new router to b/g/n default settings the WDTV saw it right away.

So does the WDTV really support N band? From this test it does not look like it does. And G speed is not enough to stream a Gopro 1080 video.

What am i doing wrong? I have ordered an N band USB Network adapter so i will add that to the test in a couple of days.

“N” isn’t a “band…”  N is a standard.

802.11n works on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

The WDTV, while being 802.11n compliant, can only use the 2.4GHz band.

No, a USB adapter will not work.

Thanks for the clarification.
I will switch the test router over to 2.4 and see if the WD live can pick it up.

Right now all devices are getting 65 mbps or better on N or G except the WD which is getting 1 on G only. No wonder it won’t stream content from my server. It plays the content (1080 at 30 fps) for 10-15 seconds and then starts buffering and dropping most frames. It is ridiculous. All the while Apple Airplay works just fine… I am no crazy Apple fan, but it does work… Might just have to send this back and try something else. In 2014 I am NOT running cat6…

If all your devices are N-standard, you should not be using G-standard at all.  Wondering if you have your router set up precisely.  If not, your N-router may actually be stepping down to G when you don’t want that to be so.

I have a N-dual band router that is on the 2.4MHz and 5GHz bands.  I also have my two N signal’s SSID labeled so that I see each individual band, and I know if I am connected at 2.4G or 5G.  Too many of these dual band routers are not set up (by user) to differentiate between the two bands.  Another thing my router can do is to use the N band and G band in a way that does not degrade the N signal so it moves data a G speeds.  All my devices use N today except and old XP laptop.  So I keep G on also for that one device.  Otherwise, I would have both bands set for N-only.  All this minutia regarding the router is in the router’s manual.  All one needs do is read it to get these finer points.

Idealphoto wrote:
Right now all devices are getting 65 mbps or better on N or G except the WD which is getting 1 on G only.

I dont see how that is possible.  G only does 54 mbps.  How are you testing the speed of the WD?