AX210 Streaming Spikes

[aplant92]

Hi all,

I'm at a loss with a problem I've been experiencing with my AX210 card and hoping someone here might have an idea.

Basically I am using a game streaming client (moonlight) to stream games from my host PC (utilizing sunshine) over our home LAN. This performs very well, except for intermittent lag spikes that seem to happen every 5-10 minutes, resulting in choppy streaming for 5 seconds before recovering.

I have ran the same stream simultaneously on my Pixel 7 Pro through moonlight, and it does not experience this lag at the same time as the AX210 does. I also tried a TP-LINK USB dongle and while this didn't have as good range, I did not get the lag spikes.

For the AX210, I've tried the following to no avail:
- modifying the Block Global BG Scanning setting to Always via regedit
- added the registry keys mentioned here:

Must do periodic Lag spikes fix for Intel Wifi cards
by u/abcanw in ShadowPC

in attempt to stop background scanning
- ensure no power related settings are causing issues (PCIE link state power management as well as some settings in the device driver advanced section)
- disabled scanning entirely via this suggestion: https://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/s/1wGwHye2O7

I'm at a loss at this point for why this Intel WiFi card (which are apparently thought of quite highly) seemingly continues to have these lag spikes where even a somewhat crappy USB WIFI dongle doesn't.

In terms of the home wifi setup, we have 3 Unifi Nano HD APs, backed by a UDM pro and Unifi switch. Given I don't see this behavior on other devices or when using a different WiFi adapter, I assume it's nothing to do with the Unifi setup.

Has anyone got experience here around this issue and have any suggestions?

 

[glens]

The scanning stuff you twiddled probably isn't the culprit. I'd first turn off power-saving mode. Other than the slight lag when waking back up from sleep in that case I've not noted any issues with the one 210 I've got.

 

[aplant92]

The scanning stuff you twiddled probably isn't the culprit. I'd first turn off power-saving mode. Other than the slight lag when waking back up from sleep in that case I've not noted any issues with the one 210 I've got.

How does one turn off power saving mode? I don't think I've come across that yet...unless I already did it.

EDIT: ah looks like I need to run a command to make this show up in power options.

To clarify as well - do you use moonlight? I suspect the problems I'm seeing wouldn't be noticeable if not for the fact I'm using a very latency dependent program

 

[glens]

It should be one of the options available in the driver control interface.

I don't even know what moonlight is apart from the sun's reflection off the moon.

 

[aplant92]

It should be one of the options available in the driver control interface.

I don't even know what moonlight is apart from the sun's reflection off the moon.

Nothing in there around power mode (aside from the loosely related power settings I've already adjusted) - I'm not sure if there is another area outside device manager I should be looking for these settings though, let me know if I'm missing something here.

Did get the setting added to power options however and set to maximum performance so will see if that helps.

That being said, I wouldn't notice any performance issues if I wasn't using moonlight for game streaming, so while your performance seems perfect I'm not sure we're comparing like for like. The issues are really only noticeable due to the streaming nature of what I'm doing, and even then only once every 10 minutes or so

 

[aplant92]

Just confirming modifying the power options stuff for the WiFi adapter didn't help...still get packet loss after a certain period of time (and again only for a few seconds but it's there)

 

[aplant92]

To add a little more info again - I've confirmed this seems to happen every 10 minutes on the dot. Google searching for similar issues with intel cards brings a few results in, however no satisfactory answers as to why. One suggestion was to try wlan optimizer, but the 'streaming mode' seems to have no effect.

I'm sure the intel card is doing SOMETHING every 10 minutes, however I've got no idea what....(I say the intel card as again, I don't get this behavior with the TP-LINK wireless dongle)

 

[Ripshod]

When this is happening do you have anything Bluetooth connected/active? (the ax210 is your Bluetooth too)

 

[aplant92]

When this is happening do you have anything Bluetooth connected/active? (the ax210 is your Bluetooth too)

Yep Bluetooth is turned on (although nothing connected) - worth trying it with Bluetooth off you think?

 

[Ripshod]

Yep Bluetooth is turned on (although nothing connected) - worth trying it with Bluetooth off you think?

Everything possible is worth trying as part of the diagnosis.

 

[aplant92]

Everything possible is worth trying as part of the diagnosis.

Sure thing - will try this out also. Will report back on if it makes any difference

 

[aplant92]

Everything possible is worth trying as part of the diagnosis.

Confirming - disabling Bluetooth has no impact unfortunately, still seeing the same spike every 10 minutes. I also tried lowering the roaming aggressiveness in case that was related, but no joy there either.

Seems insane to me that Intel specifically seems to have this behavior without any obvious resolution for it

 

[Ripshod]

Seems insane to me that Intel specifically seems to have this behavior without any obvious resolution for it

It seems this behaviour is related to your own installation or configuration - else there would be a lot more users mentioning it. To eliminate every single possible cause would be like trying to find that one brown button on a pebble beach.

 

[aplant92]

It seems this behaviour is related to your own installation or configuration - else there would be a lot more users mentioning it. To eliminate every single possible cause would be like trying to find that one brown button on a pebble beach.

There's a bit out there for this same problem with the same use-case, I think the reason for there not being much noise is due to the user case being very niche (in-home game streaming). Most people I've spoken to that had the same issue just went the wireless dongle route - so sidestepped the issue altogether.

I'm not sure where to go next - what would be the best way to start trying to diagnose what exactly happens every 10 minutes? Any monitoring applications that may help here?

 

[Ripshod]

Logs and scheduled events - that's all I know about windows. I don't use windows.

 

[tgl]

That every-10-minutes behavior smells like periodic WiFi maintenance. Some of that you can disable, but not all. This wifi ping spikes article has a lot of good info (sadly it's now pocked with ads, but not enough to make it unreadable).

 

[aplant92]

That every-10-minutes behavior smells like periodic WiFi maintenance. Some of that you can disable, but not all. This wifi ping spikes article has a lot of good info (sadly it's now pocked with ads, but not enough to make it unreadable).

Yeah that's my suspicion also but haven't been able to nail whatever it is so far...thanks for the link, will have a read and see if there's anything fruitful in there!

That being said - given it only affects the Intel card, would it be AP based? I suspect it's something specific to Intel but no idea what