Re:AC-9260, Win 10, disconnection, and Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level

TrevorPott · ‎02-24-2022

Problem: My Intel Wi-Fi card disconnects randomly if Windows 10's "Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level" is set to "Normal". If I disable it then the disconnects stop, however, it will only receive at 25Mbit/sec and transmit at 2Mbit/sec.

Hardware: Intel Wireless-AC-9260 TUF 160Mhz card soldered to an Asus Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) Motherboard.

I have tried multiple drivers. Yes, I currently have the latest ones.

My Wi-Fi Access Points are Juniper Mist AP-41 units.

2.4Ghz band is 20Mhz.

5Ghz band is 40Mhz.

Access point is 4m away (mounted on the ceiling).

I have tweaked every single nerd knob in the Wi-Fi driver settings that I can find. This includes forcing it to use both the 2.4Ghz and the 5Ghz bands as well as letting it auto-select. The card is currently using 5Ghz, with full bars, and is training up at 400Mbits.

I have replaced the antenna provided with the motherboard with a pair of these: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08GS94H98

Current Windows 10 settings are as follows:

TCP Global Parameters
----------------------------------------------
Receive-Side Scaling State : enabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level : normal
Add-On Congestion Control Provider : default
ECN Capability : disabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps : disabled
Initial RTO : 1000
Receive Segment Coalescing State : enabled
Non Sack Rtt Resiliency : disabled
Max SYN Retransmissions : 4
Fast Open : enabled
Fast Open Fallback : enabled
HyStart : enabled
Proportional Rate Reduction : enabled
Pacing Profile : off

Choosing between random disconnections and 25Mbit/2Mbit connectivity is not a choice I care to make. If there is any support that could be offered to resolve this, it would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

Edited to add:
I live in a _very_ rural area, so interference isn't the issue.

I am also convinced that it isn't the APs, because I have a dozen other devices on this network and none of them have anything like these issues.

This issue does occur when I hook this desktop up to other Wi-Fi APs.

I have used the AP that comes with my Starlink

I have used a NETGEAR Smart WiFi Router (R6350)

I have used the "wi-fi hotspot" from my Cat S62 Pro Android phone.

Alberto_R_Intel · ‎02-25-2022

TrevorPott, Thank you for posting in the Intel® Communities Support.

In order for us to provide the most accurate assistance on this scenario, we just wanted to confirm a few details about your system:

Besides the NETGEAR Smart WiFi Router (R6350), what is the model of the Router(s) being used?

Is this a new computer?

When did you purchase it?

Did you build it?

Was the Intel® wireless card working fine before on this same machine?

If so, when did the issue start?

Did you make any recent hardware/software changes that might cause this issue?

The wireless card, did you purchase it separately or did it come installed on the computer?

Which specific Windows* version are you using?

Does the problem happen at home or in the work environment?

Please attach the SSU report so we can verify further details about the components in your platform, check all the options in the report including the one that says "3rd party software logs":

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility-for-Windows-?product=91600

Any questions, please let me know.

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

TrevorPott · ‎02-25-2022

Besides the NETGEAR Smart WiFi Router (R6350), what is the model of the Router(s) being used?

In addition to the Netgear router:

1) The default router that comes with Starlink

2) My Primary APs are Juniper Mist AP41s.

The Netgear and the Starlink routers are ones I have tested against, and which exhibit the same problems, but they are not my daily drivers.

Is this a new computer?

When did you purchase it?

Did you build it?

I built this PC in late August 2021.

Was the Intel® wireless card working fine before on this same machine?

If so, when did the issue start?

The card has never worked properly. I managed to get it to stop disconnecting after about a month worth of tinkering, and just accepted the slow speeds because, at the time, my ADSL didn't go any faster than that. Now I have Starlink, it goes MUCH faster, and the speed limitation of the card (which I have to accept if I want it to not randomly disconnect) have become an issue.

Did you make any recent hardware/software changes that might cause this issue?

I have made every software, driver, and configuration change I can conceive of short of replacing the OS itself. I have not changed any hardware.

I haven't tried Linux yet, mostly because I actually need this particular PC to run Windows 10.

The wireless card, did you purchase it separately or did it come installed on the computer?

The Wireless card is soldered to the motherboard.

Which specific Windows* version are you using?

Windows 10 Pro / 21H2 / Build: 19044.1526 / Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4170.0

Does the problem happen at home or in the work environment?

I work from home. This is a desktop. There is only the one environment.

SSU report attached. It will probably report that at the moment the driver I am using is whatever Windows Update thinks is best. This is because that specific version of the driver is the most stable I have, averaging one drop out every 3-4 hours. The latest Intel drivers average dropouts every ~30 minutes.

Thanks,

--Trevor

Edited to add: the SSU report generated says that the processor information is "unavailable". The CPU is an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X.

Alberto_R_Intel · ‎02-28-2022

TrevorPott, Thank you very much for providing that information and the SSU report.

According to the SSU document, the wireless driver currently installed on your computer is version 21.10.2.2.

Just to let you know, we always recommend to install the wireless driver provided by the manufacturer of the computer, since that driver was customized by them to work with your specific platform. I looked in ASUS's website and the latest graphics driver version they have available in there is 22.80.1.1. Please try a clean installation of that driver following the instructions in the links below:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/TUF-Gaming/TUF-GAMING-X570-PLUS-WI-FI/HelpDesk_Download/

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000022173/wireless.html

Even though the Intel® Wireless drivers are generic and they do not contain the customizations done by ASUS, for testing purposes, try a clean installation this time of Intel® Wireless driver version 22.110.1.1:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19351/windows-10-and-windows-11-wi-fi-drivers-for-intel-wireless-adapters.html?wapkw=intel%20wireless%20ac%209260

Additionally, we suggest to get in contact directly with ASUS support to verify that the latest BIOS version is currently installed on your device or to gather the instructions on how to update it.

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

TrevorPott · ‎03-01-2022

I have tried both of these drivers. Dropouts are still occurring.

Alberto_R_Intel · ‎03-02-2022

TrevorPott, Thank you very much for letting us know those results.

We are sorry to hear the issue persists after trying the troubleshooting steps provided previously. Based on that, we will do further research on this matter, as soon as I get any updates I will post all the details on this thread.

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

Alberto_R_Intel · ‎03-03-2022

Hello TrevorPott, I just received an update on this matter.

The OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) is the one who provides the antenna, based on the image below it looks different than the one you are currently using:

While we are still working on your case, we just wanted to confirm:

Did you have the same issue with the OEM antenna as the one above?

You mentioned, "I have made every software, driver, and configuration change I can conceive of short of replacing the OS itself.", Didi you try to re-install the OS already?

The Window Auto-Tuning feature is from Windows 10, just to let you know, when the Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature is enabled for HTTP traffic, older routers, older firewalls, and older operating systems that are incompatible with the Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature may sometimes cause slow data transfer or a loss of connectivity. When this occurs, users may experience slow performance.

Based on that statement, did you install the latest FW of the router?

Is there any error code in the device manager?

Is there any particular reason why you enable the Receive Window Auto-Tuning option or was it activated by default?

You said: "I have tweaked every single nerd knob in the Wi-Fi driver settings that I can find. This includes forcing it to use both the 2.4Ghz and the 5Ghz bands as well as letting it auto-select.", just to make sure, did you try all the other suggestions from the link below?:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000024678/wireless.html

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

TrevorPott · ‎03-03-2022

I have had the problem now with three different antenna sets, including the OEM antenna.

I did not reinstall the OS, because the time that would take is worth way more $ than a new NIC. I would be willing to consider loading another instance of Win 10 on a separate SSD, but it would take me a couple of weeks to punch a hole in my schedule.

Juniper Mist access points automatically update firmware without user intervention required. I am on the latest version of the stable ring firmware. Please note that this occurs with multiple different kinds of access points, and I have tried multiple firmwares with each. To wit:

Juniper Mist AP41s have gone through at least 4 different firmware updates since I became aware of the problem.

I have used this with a Starlink AP, but there is zero visibility into that AP or ability to manually update firmware.

I have used this with the Netgear R6350 using updated stock firmware, and two different versions of OpenWRT.

I have used this with an Android phone acting as a hotspot with both Android 10 and Android 11.

There are no error codes in device manager.

There is nothing interesting in the Windows even logs.

As for why I poked the Receive Window Auto-Tuning...because I had run out of other ideas, and was down to "maybe it's something stupid like RSS, Chimney, or TOE". Those haven't traditionally been issues with Windows 10, but they sure were problems for a lot of Intel wired NICs in the Server 2008 days, so I was grasping at straws.

As for "did you set all the nerd knobs to the recommended defaults" yes. And the nerd knobs all get reset to those defaults every time I rip out the driver and try a different one.

I also bought a junker TPLink USB Wi-Fi NIC, and despite the part where it's supper ghetto and will at best get me a 100Mbit connection to the AP that's 8 feet away, it hasn't dropped a connection once, and the connection operates without any sort of weird throttling.

This makes me think it's probably not some oogly boogly filter that's latched onto the Windows firewall, or otherwise in the data path. I've ripped the driver out of the intel card and replaced it so many times that Windows cannot possibly be associating that Intel Wi-Fi card with the same ID as all previous instances, so anything that would have latched on to the Intel NIC in particular (as opposed to globally causing chaos for all network paths) should not be connected to the current instance of the Intel NIC driver. (At the moment I have the OEM driver 22.80.1.1 loaded.)

At this point, I'm largely down to "driver is wildly borked" or "there is a bizarre hardware error in the chip that manifests in gremlin-like fashion". If the latter, there isn't much to be done...but if you folks have some sort of diagnostic software that could be run to gather deep hardware data, maybe that's useful for figuring out what could have gone splat in the hardware, and maybe knowing which runs/bins of chips could have higher than expected failure rates.

Alberto_R_Intel · ‎03-04-2022

TrevorPott, Thank you very much for sharing those details.

We will continue with our research on this matter, as soon as I get more information I will post all the updates on this thread.

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

TrevorPott · ‎03-04-2022

I have additional information that may be useful, or may be a total red herring. I haven't been able to determine yet.

1) I put my computer to "sleep" every night, and wake it up every morning. Not hibernate, not power off, but sleep.

2) This has weird side effects on specific circumstances that I haven't fully characterized yet.

Specifically: this morning I noticed that a LAN-only Teamviewer session was acting janky. Given that I am using my new "junker" TPlink Wi-Fi, I thought this was odd. I thre up a ping -t to my gateway and noticed that every fourth or fifth packet would give me a repsonse time between 900msec and 2200msec.

That's odd.

So I systematically killed all open applications until it stopped. The application causing my system to have these issues? Google Earth. For some reason, leaving Google Earth open when sleeping the computer will result in the application causing the computer to have "network seizures" .

Closing Google Earth will cause these "network seizures" to stop. Reopening the application again without rebooting will cause them to return. I am pretty much convinced that the reason for this has something to do with the video card drivers. They don't like being forced to sleep.

Now, I don't regularly have Google Earth just sitting open, so I doubt that specific application is responsible for the wackiness of the Intel NIC...

...but maybe "putting the computer to sleep" has some affect on this. It could be the video drivers (yes I've tried multiple versions, and yes I have the absolute latest greatest installed). It could be that sleeping the computer has an effect on Intel NIC drivers. It could be something else...but "sleeping your computer causes Google Earth to give your computer network seizures" does feel like relevant information to a discussion about "why does the Intel Wi-Fi NIC soldered to my board periodically decide it forgot how to speak".

Thanks,

--Trevor

Note: Video card is an AMD reference Radeon RX 470.

TrevorPott · ‎03-04-2022

Addendum: this may be less related than I originally thought.

I rebooted the system, and Google Earth would still cause this open opening. I changed the graphics around (including using safe mode), cleared caches, and reset things...under every configuration the problem would persist so long as the application was open. Others have asked about the problem on Google support, so I'm going with "Google Earth Broken" in some mysterious fashion.

Now, admittedly, given that it doesn't seem to be broken for everyone, I'm guessing the application is interacting with something specific about my configuration, but what that could be...no idea. So there's no way to know for sure if that's related to the Intel driver thing or not.

Alberto_R_Intel · ‎03-07-2022

Hello TrevorPott, I just received an update on this matter.

Based on all troubleshooting steps that were done and considering that this issue has been happening since the beginning of the system installation, at this point we suggest contacting the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) for further diagnostic of the wireless card.

Additionally, you provided some extra information related to third-party apps that could be interfering, so, as the last recommendation, it will be worth performing a clean Operating System installation since, as you mentioned, under every configuration the problem would persist so long as the application was open.

Other than that, from our side, we advise to get in contact directly with the OEM as the next step, for further assistance on this matter:

https://www.asus.com/support/

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician