Problems with weak signal on 2.4/5 GHz dual band routers

[Natanji <natanji@gmail.com>]

Hi,
hope this is the right place to ask for support on a very specific
problem I'm experiencing. Otherwise I'd be happy to know where else I
should report this problem.

So my university is running a dual band eduroam wifi. When the signal is
rather weak, I get frequent timeouts for my network connections (even
though my network manager will report that I am still connected). When I
force my wifi card to stay on the 2.4 GHz network, everything works
fine. But I usually want to use 5GHz and benefit from the higher
transmission rate, so toggling that manually is just an ugly workaround.

Seemingly the driver makes it connect to the 5 GHz band, even if the
signal quality is so bad there that the transmission rate is worse
and/or the connection breaks down frequently (because naturally, 5 GHz
networks have more signal loss over distance). I have no idea how
iwlwifi and wpa_supplicant work internally, so maybe I am missing some
vital option there?

My card is an Intel 6300 Ultimate AGN, and I've tried different network
managers (currently on wicd) but get the same problem everywhere.

Cheers,
Natanji