IWLWIFI + AX210 / Linux - needs some work

[Tech Junky]

If you go to the kvalo git it's posted there. Just replace the one in lib/firmware with it and see if it boosts the speeds. The ath cards can be finicky with firmware. He fixes issues with them and eventually they get piped into the linux-firmware package. I use the board files form there when setting them up as an AP because the current releases tend to be buggy on new controllers.

For comparison when wired what speeds do you get on the NAS? Might just be the drives being slow vs a network issue. 125MB\s should be the top end for a gigabit connection.

 

[thetechhimself]

If you go to the kvalo git it's posted there. Just replace the one in lib/firmware with it and see if it boosts the speeds. The ath cards can be finicky with firmware. He fixes issues with them and eventually they get piped into the linux-firmware package. I use the board files form there when setting them up as an AP because the current releases tend to be buggy on new controllers.

For comparison when wired what speeds do you get on the NAS? Might just be the drives being slow vs a network issue. 125MB\s should be the top end for a gigabit connection.

I can punch 100mb/sec+ from my Macbook, on WiFi... I'll try the firmware in a bit on next break. My Router is indicating that I'm getting around 1000mbps/sec down, and 200mbps/sec up on my link... What's interesting is that appears to be the limit, down, on this firmware anyways. My router shows my Macbook is negotiating 960mbps on the other hand, up or down given the demand at the time.

 

[Tech Junky]

If you grab wavemon you can see more info on the card from the cli. 1000/200 is a bit odd.

 

[thetechhimself]

If you go to the kvalo git it's posted there. Just replace the one in lib/firmware with it and see if it boosts the speeds. The ath cards can be finicky with firmware. He fixes issues with them and eventually they get piped into the linux-firmware package. I use the board files form there when setting them up as an AP because the current releases tend to be buggy on new controllers.

For comparison when wired what speeds do you get on the NAS? Might just be the drives being slow vs a network issue. 125MB\s should be the top end for a gigabit connection.

Went from 24.5mb/sec to 25.2mb/sec after latest firmware. I am showing higher tx-up on the router though to the client, but not consistently.

Something may be wonky on the Kernal side I gather. The AX210 in Win10 for example, smokes Jammy at nearly a gigabit, on wireless, effective (not negotiated). I haven't tried Windows 10 yet with the 7205, but dollars to donuts it's the same story. There's probably some tinkering that has to happen in Ubuntu, to get the most out of the 7205, like the AX210... I may play with it a bit later.

 

[thetechhimself]

If you grab wavemon you can see more info on the card from the cli. 1000/200 is a bit odd.

I do have a ton going on in my house, granted. Moving my computer to the other side of the desk fixed being able to break 400 on the AX210, for example.

 

[thetechhimself]

If you grab wavemon you can see more info on the card from the cli. 1000/200 is a bit odd.

She won't budge; I got her up to 565mbps up, by placing it as far away from the LCD as possible, and as close to the router as possible. 25mb though is the best I can manage LAN to LAN. WAN effective is more poor though; Comcast congestion though so that doesn't help. Macbook is poor too to the internet at the moment so that's Comcast, not the client.

I'll need to run LAN to LAN tests on the AX210 on Jammy to confirm 25mb may not be some other protocol limitation back to the NAS. I normally move my Synology data via my Mac.

278.3 is the best download to the internet now. Improvement, but still behind the AX210 which can manage 560. Comcast congestion is clear. Router is pulling 1300. I either have to find a way to shake her free, or maybe that AX210 isn't garbage afterall in Linux, compared to the alternatives at the moment.

 

[thetechhimself]

She won't budge; I got her up to 565mbps up, by placing it as far away from the LCD as possible, and as close to the router as possible. 25mb though is the best I can manage LAN to LAN. WAN effective is more poor though; Comcast congestion though so that doesn't help. Macbook is poor too to the internet at the moment so that's Comcast, not the client.

I'll need to run LAN to LAN tests on the AX210 on Jammy to confirm 25mb may not be some other protocol limitation back to the NAS. I normally move my Synology data via my Mac.

278.3 is the best download to the internet now. Improvement, but still behind the AX210 which can manage 560. Comcast congestion is clear. Router is pulling 1300. I either have to find a way to shake her free, or maybe that AX210 isn't garbage afterall in Linux, compared to the alternatives at the moment.

Put back in the AX210; 500mb easy to Google Speed test, and 38mb easy, back to the Synology DS220+ that's not a protocol/kernel problem the fact I can break both by swapping out the adapter.

Router reports 1733 down, and up, interesting.

Unless you have any optimization ideas for the 7205, I'd say it's off my list and I'll take the 25% restock fee hit and send back.

I should note the wireless connectors don't take easily to the 7205, btw vs all the other adapters I've tried till now. Maybe there could be something going on? It was "easy" putting the AX210 back in, vs putting the 7205 in last night, took a minute to get those connectors to snap. They will, but man, finicky. There may be an analog-strength element to this, not just driver maturity.

 

[Tech Junky]

Either there's something blocking the RF or there's something bored in the os. As a client with Intel I can hit gig+ in Linux.

Sounds like there might be some tuning needed on the router like setting a static channel w/o interference because you should be able to hit LAN speeds as high as the wan test to the internal devices as well. Another thing would be getting some mhf4 pigtails and mounting some external antennas to get them high and line of sight. This would get better speeds on any of the adapters.

 

[thetechhimself]

Either there's something blocking the RF or there's something bored in the os. As a client with Intel I can hit gig+ in Linux.

Sounds like there might be some tuning needed on the router like setting a static channel w/o interference because you should be able to hit LAN speeds as high as the wan test to the internal devices as well. Another thing would be getting some mhf4 pigtails and mounting some external antennas to get them high and line of sight. This would get better speeds on any of the adapters.

I'd agree; my house is "noisy"; moving my NUC to a better position (for WiFi, not functional/appearance in the house), I am able to pull 590 from Google and 39mb from my NAS; so sure, there's some juice to be squeezed there, but not so much.

But, my Macbook smokes that (gig; ie 900mb+, WAN and LAN), and does AX210 in Windows (ditto; and without moving it to the middle of the room). There's gotta be something in the OS I'm missing on that AX210 in Ubuntu 22.04.

Wired to my NUC on Ubuntu yields gig btw, as expected. We assume this, but just sayin it's not like there's a guest-host or router/NAS problem; this is all driver/config/kernel IMO.

 

[Tech Junky]

all driver/config/kernel IMO.

Even if that's the case all of the cards you have tried should be hitting higher speeds than what you're posting. Try booting it up on a USB drive and see if things change from what you have configured currently. Bypassing all of your changes might yield higher speeds / performance. If that's the case then I'd purge linux-firmware and zap the /lib/firmware folder entirely and then reinstall the firmware package. Don't reboot until it's reinstalled though or you'll end up with needing to do a live session and mount things to get it back to working condition.

Sent you a PM w/ some antenna ideas though.

 

[thetechhimself]

Even if that's the case all of the cards you have tried should be hitting higher speeds than what you're posting. Try booting it up on a USB drive and see if things change from what you have configured currently. Bypassing all of your changes might yield higher speeds / performance. If that's the case then I'd purge linux-firmware and zap the /lib/firmware folder entirely and then reinstall the firmware package. Don't reboot until it's reinstalled though or you'll end up with needing to do a live session and mount things to get it back to working condition.

Sent you a PM w/ some antenna ideas though.

I reimaged recently actually since I'd done alot of tinkering with firmware, channels and driver configs only to find out just changing the oreintation and side of the table the NUC was what made a difference so that was the quickest way to undo all the junk I'd thrown at it was to zap it and start fresh rather than undo everything in the BASH history and revert my conf backups.

Dabbled with specialized attenuation previously; I found it works great for specific use-cases, but not general use which I have smart TVs, doorbells, smartphones, printers, robot vacuums, you name it, so that's out. Appreciate the suggestion though.

The only thing I haven't tried, which is noteworthy; my 2230 adapter (AX210), sits under the boot 2280 Ubuntu drive. I could swap that? Although I doubt that's the case; interference should manifest to the antennas (sit at the front base of my NUC), not the card. My Windows Drive sits on the opposing 2280 slot, which doesn't have the 2230 AX210 under it.

 

[Tech Junky]

Well yeah you can't swap B key with M key as the notch is in a different spot.

Since it's a NUC there are some PCB antennas with 6-8" leads on them that might work better outside of the case. I use them on my gateway for the WiFi side.

https://a.co/d/dCT4dOs they even have an adhesive back to stick them to the case.

 

[ka2107]

Hi, I am new member of SNB Forum. I recently bought a Asus Zenbook S13 OLED with AMD Ryzen 7 processor for Black Friday. It came with AMD RZ616 (Mediatek MT7922) M.2 2230 Key A/E WiFi card. I tried the MT7922 card only for a few hour and did not experience any issues with it, but still I swapped it with Intel AX210 (bought from Amazon) since lot of people in Reddit and other places complain about the MT7922 card.

However I actually wanted to install QCNFA765 (which is supposed to be a Qualcomm Fastconnect 6900 chip) after I read about Windows 11 Dual Station. I looked around for the QCNFA765 card and did not find any stock in usual places (eBay, Amazon). In some other websites I saw them selling for USD $60 to USD $70 (excl tax and shipping) which is way higher than the USD $20 + tax I paid for the Intel AX210.

I finally found it in Aliexpress https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804834614876.html for USD $23 (incl taxes and shipping). This is my 1st time ordering from Aliexpress (or any foreign website), so not sure about customs or any extra charges that may be levied. The expected delivery is end of Dec 2022, so it will be some time before I can try the card.

I currently have Windows 11 in my Asus laptop and plan to install Arch Linux (with latest stable kernel and maybe LTS kernel) when I have some free time. I would like to know few things regarding the QCNFA765:

1) Does QCNFA765 have any problems (HW or Driver) in Windows 11? How is the Latency and Bandwidth compared to Intel AX210?
2) How is the Latency and Bandwidth in Linux (preferably Arch Linux or something with recent kernel) compared to Intel AX210?
3) Between Intel AX210, Qualcomm QCNFA765 and Mediatek MT7922, which card do you guys recommend long term for dual boot Windows 11 and Linux setup? I plan to keep all the cards in hand, but I would like to avoid swapping back and forth.

I have more trust on Mediatek mt76 Linux driver for the MT7922 as it is developed by an OpenWrt dev (mostly AP functionality), though not sure about STA/client functionality. But I am not sure about the Windows side of things reg MT7922.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tech Junky]

1) Does QCNFA765 have any problems (HW or Driver) in Windows 11? How is the Latency and Bandwidth compared to Intel AX210?
2) How is the Latency and Bandwidth in Linux (preferably Arch Linux or something with recent kernel) compared to Intel AX210?
3) Between Intel AX210, Qualcomm QCNFA765 and Mediatek MT7922, which card do you guys recommend long term for dual boot Windows 11 and Linux setup? I plan to keep all the cards in hand, but I would like to avoid swapping back and forth.

None of this has been tested.

I only really tested the MTK as an AP and it was more of a PITA than I have time or patience for. I didn't order the QCA version... well I did but they didn't have it in stock and cancelled the order and I didn't bother sourcing it again since.

I did however add an AX411 for DCT bonding of 2.4/5 bands on my laptop and server since they were dirt cheap @ $18/ea. Kind of nice to get 1.5gbps on the LAN when moving files around w/o needing to connect to the machine with Ethernet.

AX411 will only work with Intel CPU's though so, yeah.