My understanding of dual-band cards acting as soft-AP is that the band that they operate on as a soft-AP is the same band that the card is on as a client. [This raises the question of what band does the soft-AP operate on if the WLAN card is not connected to any network? The answer to this appears to be that the card always generates a 2.4 GHz soft-AP if it is not connected to a Wi-Fi network.]
In other words:
- If the WLAN card is connected to a 2.4 GHz network as a cliet, then the soft-AP it generates is also on 2.4 GHz.
- If the WLAN card is connected to a 5 GHz network as a client, then the soft-AP it generates is also on 5 GHz.
- If the WLAN card is NOT connected to a Wi-Fi network , then the soft-AP it generates is on 2.4 GHz.
I must stae that I am not an expert in the area of Windows7/8/8.1 generation of a soft-AP using a mini-PCIe WLAN card. The above statements are from a bit of information from Microsoft, and some pratical tests.
To answer your question of how did I get the card acting as a 5 GHz soft-AP:
- The Intel WLAN card is configured into 802.11 a/b/g mode. (DeviceManager -> AdvancedSettings)
- First ensure that there is a 5 GHz AccessPoint available. Lets call it SSID: FULL_AP5.
- Connect to this 5 GHz (FULL_AP5). So at this stage the Intel WLAN card is acting as a client on FULL_AP5 network and is operating in the 5 GHz band.
- Now start a soft-AP e.g. SSID: SOFT_AP5. You can do this manually using the various 'netsh wlan ... hostednetwork' or use a 3rd party application like Connectify. As the Intel WLAN card was already connected onto FULL_AP5 operating in the 5 GHz band, then SOFT-AP5 will also be in the 5 GHz band.
Back to the original problem.... If I have the Intel WLAN card configured in 802.11a mode (i.e. 5 GHz ONLY) then following the same procedure above, fails at Step (4) !!