Wireless speed dropoff with Intel AC7260 Wireless Card.

[cosrocket]

I have an HP Spectre laptop with the Intel AC7260 wireless network card. When doing speed tests the speed drops literally in half at only around 35 to 40 feet from the router on both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands. I've tried very good routers, the Asus RT-AC68u and Netgear R7000 and I get the same results with both. With my MacBook Pro I get fast stable speeds more than double that distance from the router with no drop in speed. I have upgraded to the latest drivers from Intel's site but nothing helps this precipitous drop off in speed.

Is there anything I could change, a setting or something that will make an improvement? Or is the Intel AC7260 just that bad?

 

[jegesq]

What driver are you using for the Intel AC7260? If there is one that has been issued by HP, you should try that (I looked last month when I upgraded one of my laptop's internal wireless card to an AC7260 and could not find any HP-specific driver). If you can't find one from HP (or even if you can), you might want to try one of the drivers from Intel (pick the one that fits your OS) at: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProdId=3714

There could be a myriad of other reasons for decreased performance, including the configuration and orientation of your router's antennas and the internal antennas on your laptop. Do you have clear line of sight, or are you picking up the router's signal through a wall made of metal, with lots of pipes in it, concrete, brick, etc?

What OS are you using on your laptop? What are the advance settings for the 7260 wireless card (assuming you're using Windows, look in Device Manager and then look in "Advanced" for the card). And on and on. What kind of wireless router? What firmware version? What settings have you enabled/disabled on the router? What sort of wireless speeds are you getting at closer distances, and what is the PHY connection speed/rate at which your laptop is connecting to the router? What kinds of speeds are you getting doing LAN to LAN file transfers at say 3 ft from the router?

There are lots of things you can change, depending on what you're using. It would be helpful if you provided a bit more info.

 

[cosrocket]

Thanks for your reply. OS is Windows 8.1 Pro. I was using the driver from the HP support site for my particular model but the speed drop off was originally there, which is why I upgraded to the newest one for my OS on Intel's site, 17.13.11.5, 12/8/14.

It's an open concept house, so that is certainly not the issue. The router is sitting on a table, not enclosed in a cabinet or even partially blocked. I was thinking it could be the antenna in the laptop, but I thought if there were any settings I could try to change in device manager for the wireless card I would definitely try that. I just don't know what parameters to change.

 

[jegesq]

Ok. Understood. Now what are the settings for the card in your laptop?

Go into Device Manager and find the 7260 adapter and right click on it, select "Properties" and then tell us the settings, in particular the "Advanced" settings as well as those for Power Management.

 

[jegesq]

You might also provide the basic and "Professional" configurable "Wireless" settings on your AC68U for both 2.4ghz and 5ghz.

Frankly, there are a number of settings that can have some impact but without knowing what you've got enabled, or disabled, or otherwise set, it's hard to know where to start, because the problem might not be the 7260 card at all, but the setting on your router. You really need to provide as much detail as possible about what you're using (e.g., firmware version, channels you're testing, channel widths, how you're testing, etc.).

Also, you might try to use something like a wifi analyzer app on a smartphone (assuming you have one). I particularly like the one from Netgear (called, appropriately, Wifi Analyzer), or the one from KaBits. Lots of Wifi analysis apps available in the Google Play Store (and I'm sure there are many if you have an iPhone too). Measure the signal at various distances and see if the drop in speed is repeatable.

 

[Zythyr]

Intel Wireless-AC is crap. Just piece of crap. I bought two different laptops, one with Wireless-AC 7260 and one with Wireless-AC 3160. Sitting in front of the router gives me full 30+ Mbps when tested at www.speedtest.net When going to a different room, speed drops sharply below 3Mbps. One room very far from the router gives connectivity issues.... When compared to a laptop with a non Intel Wireless AC card, the laptop with Broadcom wireless outperforms with minimal to no decrease in performance.

The performance of the wireless card should be independent of the type of router. No consumer should be expected to configure the router to optimize the wireless card, since in many situations the router can't be configured because it is a public router such at a coffee shop, university, library.

 

[azazel1024]

Intel Wireless-AC is crap. Just piece of crap. I bought two different laptops, one with Wireless-AC 7260 and one with Wireless-AC 3160. Sitting in front of the router gives me full 30+ Mbps when tested at www.speedtest.net When going to a different room, speed drops sharply below 3Mbps. One room very far from the router gives connectivity issues.... When compared to a laptop with a non Intel Wireless AC card, the laptop with Broadcom wireless outperforms with minimal to no decrease in performance.

The performance of the wireless card should be independent of the type of router. No consumer should be expected to configure the router to optimize the wireless card, since in many situations the router can't be configured because it is a public router such at a coffee shop, university, library.

Don't know what to tell you there. I get a full fat nearly 500Mbps with my Intel 7260ac a few feet from my router. Across my house, 50ft away, through the floor, 3 walls and a 4ft masonry fire place with steel pellet stove sitting in it, I can get roughly 30Mbps of performance on 2.4GHz.

The only issue I found is that with some routers, having UASP mode ENABLED in the driver settings for the Intel 7260ac seems to cause extreme performance problems. My speeds on both routers I have drop from extremely fast, to around 32-40Mbps absolute maximum and performance drops off quickly with range.

So try looking under the driver properties for the adapter, one of the options should be UASP, disable it if it is enabled and see if that helps.

 

[cosrocket]

Intel Wireless-AC is crap. Just piece of crap. I bought two different laptops, one with Wireless-AC 7260 and one with Wireless-AC 3160. Sitting in front of the router gives me full 30+ Mbps when tested at www.speedtest.net When going to a different room, speed drops sharply below 3Mbps. One room very far from the router gives connectivity issues.... When compared to a laptop with a non Intel Wireless AC card, the laptop with Broadcom wireless outperforms with minimal to no decrease in performance.

The performance of the wireless card should be independent of the type of router. No consumer should be expected to configure the router to optimize the wireless card, since in many situations the router can't be configured because it is a public router such at a coffee shop, university, library.

When I saw your post I thought I could have written it. One of the reasons I bought the HP Spectre laptop was for the wireless AC network card. But the range and terrible speed drop off is awful. If I run the speed test at speedtest.net, as I walk away from the router I can see the speed dropping down very quickly. In one area of my house, where my Macbook Pro with a Broadcom wireless N network card gets 128 Mbps down and 26 Mbps up the HP laptop with the Intel AC7260 get around 15 Mbps down and 4 up. That is ridiculous decrease in speed. I only get the kind of speed I get on the Macbook Pro at less than 30 ft away from the router. After that the speed falls off a cliff.

I don't see how it would be the router if the MacBook Pro with the Broadcom wireless N card gets wired like speed at more than 100 ft away from the router.

I was at BestBuy this morning and checked several laptops and noticed that most are using the Intel wireless cards. The only one I saw that used the Broadcom AC card other than the Macbook Pro was the Lenovo Yoga 3. The Yoga 2 sitting next to it uses the Intel AC7260.

 

[azazel1024]

What signal strength are you getting on both and what is the connection speed? Run something like InSSIDer to tell you the former and just open up the adapter under network properties for the later.

A lot of laptops (especially!) have HORRIBLE wireless antenna placement, especially with metal chasis and stuff, this absolutel eviscerates your signal.

Also, please check some of the wireless adapter settings and see what they are.

 

[jegesq]

Ok. Understood. Now what are the settings for the card in your laptop?

Go into Device Manager and find the 7260 adapter and right click on it, select "Properties" and then tell us the settings, in particular the "Advanced" settings as well as those for Power Management.

Let me repeat, this time in ALL CAPS (because sometimes shouting is the only way people read stuff):

PLEASE LET US KNOW WHAT THE SETTINGS ARE FOR YOUR AC7260 ADAPTER, INCLUDING THE "ADVANCED" AND "POWER MANAGEMENT SETTINGS" ON YOUR LAPTOP. YOU CAN FIND THESE SETTINGS IN "DEVICE MANAGER" IN YOUR WINDOWS LAPTOP; LOOK IN THE CONTROL PANEL FOR "DEVICE MANAGER" AND THEN LOOK AT THE SETTINGS FOR THE DEVICE (THE INTEL AC7260 CARD). POST THE SETTINGS SO WE CAN SEE WHAT YOUR DEVICE IS USING.

I'm using an AC7260, and have absolutely zero problems with speeds dropping, no matter what router I happen to be connected to. At home, it's an AC66U (router and repeater), with no issues; at work, it's a TP-Link, again with zero issues.

The ONLY problem that I've ever had (and its the one most frequently complained about on the internet by users of the AC7260) is that it sometimes doesn't come out of sleep/hibernation mode properly. Haven't experienced the issue though in about a month, so it's no longer something I have to deal with, as it seems to work just fine.

Like Azazel, I don't experience remarkable speed drops, whether on 5ghz (which is pretty much all that I use now), or 2.4ghz. So it's got to be either some of the "advanced" or "professional" settings in your router, or it's the settings for your wireless card.

Which is why I asked you to post them here. But if you just want to complain...well that's certainly something you can do, but it's not very productive.

 

[jegesq]

BTW, this is to Zythyr:

I asked you the very same questions in the other related thread (to provide information about your settings). You chose not to do that and instead returned the device to Best Buy. Your choice.

But the fact that you had a bad experience, likely based on bad settings, does not make the 7260 wireless card "crap." It's not and it's used by millions of other people without any issues at all (save for the issue of waking up from "sleep/hibernation" mode).

 

[cosrocket]

power setting for the card is: Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power,

Here are all of the settings under the Advanced tab in the wireless card:

Property......Value

802.11n Channel Width for 2.4HHz... Auto
802.11, Channel Width for 5.2GHz... Auto
Ad Hoc Channel 802.11b/g... 1
Ad Hoc QoS Mode... WMM Disabled
ARP ofload for WLAN... Enabled
Bluetooth(R) AMP... Enabled
Fat Channel Intolerant... Disabled
GTK rekeying for WoWLAN... Enabled
HT Mode... VHT Mode
Mixed Mode Protection... CTS-to-self Enabled
NS offload for WoWLAN... Enabled
Packet Coalescing... Enabled
Preferred Band... No Preference
Roaming Aggressiveness... Medium
Sleep on WoWLAN Disconnet... Disabled
Throughput Booster... Disabled
Transmit Power... Highest
U-APSD support... Disabled
Wake on Magic packet ... Enabled
Wake on Pattern Match... Enabled
Wireless Mode... 802.11a/b/g

 

[sfx2000]

I'm a bit surprised, as the Intel WiFi clients have been well regarded...

I'm thinking this is antenna issue with the client devices...

FWIW - Apple has done a pretty good job with their RF performance on recent devices - so for the OP, it's a good baseline perhaps...

sfx

 

[jegesq]

power setting for the card is: Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power,

Here are all of the settings under the Advanced tab in the wireless card:

Property......Value

802.11n Channel Width for 2.4HHz... Auto
802.11, Channel Width for 5.2GHz... Auto
Ad Hoc Channel 802.11b/g... 1
Ad Hoc QoS Mode... WMM Disabled
ARP ofload for WLAN... Enabled
Bluetooth(R) AMP... Enabled
Fat Channel Intolerant... Disabled
GTK rekeying for WoWLAN... Enabled
HT Mode... VHT Mode
Mixed Mode Protection... CTS-to-self Enabled
NS offload for WoWLAN... Enabled
Packet Coalescing... Enabled
Preferred Band... No Preference
Roaming Aggressiveness... Medium
Sleep on WoWLAN Disconnet... Disabled
Throughput Booster... Disabled
Transmit Power... Highest
U-APSD support... Disabled
Wake on Magic packet ... Enabled
Wake on Pattern Match... Enabled
Wireless Mode... 802.11a/b/g

Can't see anything wrong with those settings. Same as mine for my Intel AC7260 in an HP i7 laptop.

I don't believe you've told us what router and firmware version you are using. Please provide that information, and the router settings for both 2.4ghz and 5ghz, including advanced settings (e.g., A MPDU, TX Burst, Beamforming, etc.).

 

[azazel1024]

I would try disabling the Bluetooth amp as well as enabling throughput boost. I've found sometimes bluetooth amp and bluetooth compatibility (which is absent in the Intel driver) can sometimes cause issues with wireless performance.

Other than that, I don't see anything wrong with the settings. I'd look at the router now to see what might be going on. Baring that, its either a faulty card, or more likely poor antenna placement in the laptop.

 

[xeqw]

I'm a bit surprised, as the Intel WiFi clients have been well regarded...

I'm thinking this is antenna issue with the client devices...

FWIW - Apple has done a pretty good job with their RF performance on recent devices - so for the OP, it's a good baseline perhaps...

sfx

The 53xx and 6xxx wifi cards were good, not so with the 7260. There's a really long thread over at notebook review discussing issues with the card. Seems like it's pretty unreliable over the 2.4GHz band.

 

[sfx2000]

What signal strength are you getting on both and what is the connection speed? Run something like InSSIDer to tell you the former and just open up the adapter under network properties for the later.

A lot of laptops (especially!) have HORRIBLE wireless antenna placement, especially with metal chasis and stuff, this absolutel eviscerates your signal.

Also, please check some of the wireless adapter settings and see what they are.

THe Macbook Pro performance has more to do with their RF Antenna design layouts, the Broadcom chip helps, but antenna design is there their strength is...

 

[xeqw]

THe Macbook Pro performance has more to do with their RF Antenna design layouts, the Broadcom chip helps, but antenna design is there their strength is...

The latest Pro comes with the Broadcom BCM94360CD 3 stream chip with 3 antennas. Would beat the crap out of the 2 stream AC7260 any day.

When comparing with N cards however, the Intel 6300 card is quite comparable to MacBooks with a Broadcom equivalent iirc.

 

[tikiman1]

"Ad Hoc QoS Mode... WMM Disabled"

Change to "WMM Enabled"

Can try it with "Throughput Booster" enabled or disabled. Results vary.

On the power management tab make sure "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is unchecked.

Go into Control Panel > Power Options (if you don't see it change the view from category to small icons in the upper right corner)

Click "Change Plan Settings" on the power plan that is selected.

Click "Change advanced power settings"

Click the + next to "Wireless adapter settings"

Make sure it is set to "Maximum Performance"


I use these settings and always connect at a minimum 466mbs. I usually have no problem streaming uncompressed, full size blu-ray ISO's from my Media Center. I say usually because occasionally i have a problem streaming blu-rays out to my back garage. (I think the neighbors have a 5Ghz phone that screws up my signal)

 

[jegesq]

"Ad Hoc QoS Mode... WMM Disabled"

Change to "WMM Enabled"

Can try it with "Throughput Booster" enabled or disabled. Results vary.

On the power management tab make sure "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is unchecked.

Go into Control Panel > Power Options (if you don't see it change the view from category to small icons in the upper right corner)

Click "Change Plan Settings" on the power plan that is selected.

Click "Change advanced power settings"

Click the + next to "Wireless adapter settings"

Make sure it is set to "Maximum Performance"

I too used to use the changes to settings that you have suggested on my 7260AC when I first installed it, but then I discovered that the power settings had precisely the opposite effect, and they were contributing and/or causing the card to refuse to "wake up" when the computer was returning from sleep/hibernation. I don't recall where I first saw that suggestion (to actually leave the advanced power settings so that it is checked) but it's worked for me to keep it checked. In contrast, years ago, using 802.11g and n cards, I always unchecked this as it would sometimes lead to hard disk errors on the laptop.

Of course, the OP can change whatever settings he thinks will work. I find that it works for me to keep that item checked, and to leave WMM "disabled" as well. Same thing with TX Burst on the router (leave it disabled), and to also leave WMM disabled. I also don't believe "throughput booster" has any effect on 802.11, but instead is designed for 802.11g. But hey, he can certainly give it a go to see if it makes any difference.