AC8260 & AC8265 major connection issues with Asus routers ...

[MSerm]

I have tried 2 separate HP Laptops, one with AC8260 and one with AC8265 cards,

and both have issues sustaining a solid connection to my RT-AC1900P (RT-AC68U)

Asus router on the 2.4Ghz band. The connection will randomly lose pings to the router

for about 20 seconds then fix itself, however the wireless link remains connected.

Laptops are Spectre x360 (one Pro - older model) and one newest Intel 8th Gen.

This is on both laptops running latest drivers 20.40.0.4 (also tried many older ones),

and Windows 10 Pro x64 (latest updates). The wireless network has a strong connection

and it's always full bars and 144/144 Mbps (this is running on a 20 Mhz channel width),

although I've tried many other options, including changing power options in the Intel

Wireless drivers as recommended on Intel Technical Bulletins, without success.

New installs of Windows 10, as well as factory resets, tried everything ...

Sometimes the issues happens every minute, sometimes every ~10 minutes.

The same cards seem to work fine with an Asus RT-N66U on 2.4Ghz band.

What's the next step for troubleshooting this issue ?

Thanks in advance!

[MSerm]

It is very interesting, and obviously that router is suspect, however it also happens to be one of the most popular routers in the world ...

RT-AC68U, same as RT-AC68R, same as RT-AC1900, same as RT-AC1900P, same as TM-AC1900 ...

I would imagine it affects more routers, but people just blame it on 2.4 ghz interference, and switch to 5 ghz and problem goes away.

But the point it, there's issues, possibly with all Broadcom AC supporting routers when combined with Intel cards used on 2.4 ghz ...

[CMora8]

If it's an issue reported by a lot of people, it will need to be addressed by a firmware update to your host (router), not through the client system drivers, specially if the issue happens on multiple operating systems (Win8.1 drivers use a completely different driver model than Win10 drivers, those use the https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/network/wifi-universal-driver-model WDI, for example).

Otherwise, choosing a different router, taking your current hardware into consideration, might be a lot simpler. Unless that's your only option, I suppose.

[MSerm]

Yes, that's a typical scenario ... one manufacturer blames another one for incompatibility and nothing happens

I'm pretty sure a lot of the code in these drivers is re-used on all operating systems,

does Intel use "soft" firmware updates like Broadcom did that are uploaded to cards ...

All I'm trying to say is that there's some sort of an issue that Intel should be probably looking into ...

I have 20 other devices that all work 100% on 2.4 ghz and any Intel adapter I've tried has issues,

of course the issues are intermittent so sometimes you can have 5 in 5 minutes, and sometimes zero in an hour.

I'm willing to work with someone to try to troubleshoot this ... even logging all packets if needed.

[idata]

Hello escape75,

Thanks for your reply.

We'll share the already provided logs and information with our business unit. However, we can't detect this as a driver/device problem.

Our last recommendation regarding this issue is to keep your router firmware up to date.

Best regards,

Eugenio F.

[MSerm]

Thank you Eugenio, hopefully someone there has a RT-AC68U they can quickly test in 2.4 ghz to see the issues

Have them just open the developer console in chrome and keep refreshing my page ... www.sermak.ca and it will happen.

They will see partial loads, for example, font will not load properly on the splash screen, etc.

[ATell1]

I doubt it's a driver issue as the AC68U shares the same Broadcom CPU/WiFi chipset as the R7000 from Netgear and is also pretty similar to the newer generation R8500 and Asus AC88U. I haven't seen issues with the R7000 or R8500 with the 8265 and 9260. The issue could be down to Asus or some of their default settings. Try disabling Air Time Fairness as some clients ie Chromecast have issues with it and maybe some WiFi cards. Also try disabling Implicit aka Universal Beamforming.

[MSerm]

Have you tried using *2.4 Ghz* with the Netgear R7000 and Intel AC8265 though ?

[ATell1]

Yeah, infact I am a beta tester for them so I have had use the R7000 previously for various tests and I used the 2.4Ghz as well, no longer with me though as I gave it away but definitely no issues with the 8265ac. I'm pretty sure it may be the Implicit Beam forming which is not really standardized between various vendors unlike Explicit Beamforming which is a standard and hence may result in issues on 2.4Ghz. I have it enabled on my R8500 without issue but try disabling it and see how it goes. Can't really bring up my R9000/R7800 as they are Qualcomm based.

[MSerm]

I appreciate your suggestion, I will test it out.

For now I have tried disabling explicit beam forming only and the issue still happens, so now

I will try disabling implicit beam forming (Asus calls it Universal beam forming) as you suggested.

I hope it's that. I believe the RT-N66U doesn't support beam forming, and it gave me no issues!

It's interesting that the outage happens slowly, first starts with a website then affects router connection:

C:\Users\Anna>ping 192.168.0.100

Pinging 192.168.0.100 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.100: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.100: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64

C:\Users\Anna>ping sermak.ca

Pinging sermak.ca [192.185.160.194] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.

Request timed out.

C:\Users\Anna>ping 192.168.0.100

Pinging 192.168.0.100 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.

Request timed out.

[MSerm]

Unfortunately the issue is still happening with both Explicit and Universal beam forming set to disabled.

I will try other settings under advanced, such as Airtime Fairness, and Turbo QAM,

although I doubt anything will change as they are set to defaults already ...

Thanks!

[MSerm]

I have possibly found the culprit setting ...

I have disabled both Airtime Fairness and Turbo QAM and the issue seems to be gone.

I will need to do more testing, and need to narrow it down to which one causes it, but so

far so good. Of course it might still show up as it was intermittent, but it's looking good!

Update: Issue is still happening ...

[ATell1]

If nothing else is working then the issue maybe down to the rotuer itself.

[MSerm]

I hope not

Because that would mean the card doesn't work with the most popular router on the market:

https://gear.lifehacker.com/these-are-your-favorite-wireless-routers-1788206682 https://gear.lifehacker.com/these-are-your-favorite-wireless-routers-1788206682

I will actually test with the RT-AC68U because I have the RT-AC1900P (Best Buy version)

but I do have access to a few RT-AC68U as pretty much everyone at work has one ...

I have also tried 2 separate RT-AC1900P so it's not a defective unit.

In the end I'll probably end up replacing the card in the laptop with a BCM94350ZAE,

I also have a AC9260 but I'm guessing I will see the exact same issues with it.

Thanks again.

[ATell1]

Yeah either change the card or contact Asus and inform them that the same WiFi Chipset / CPU are in the R7000 and even the Apple AirPort Extreme neither of which have issues. They probably tweaked some settings or made changes to the router's Broadcom WiFi chipset firmware causing the issue.

On a side note, you could always upgrade to the Qualcom chipset based R7800, it still has the best 5Ghz performance / range of any consumer router according to most reviews. Plus unlike Broadcom based routers the R7800 has functioning MU-MIMO unlike on Broadcom based units (ie AC88U/AC5300/R8500) where it actually decreases performance due to their terrible implementation.

[MSerm]

This a bit of a surprise, I have tested at work where we have a RT-AC68U

and I didn't find any issues with the 2.4 ghz connectivity like I do at home.

Same settings pretty much on both routers, as I've set both up,

so it can only mean two things:

a) some device on my network is sending some packets causing the issue.

b) only the RT-AC1900P have the issues but not RT-AC68U (same firmwares)

I'll do more testing ...

[ATell1]

Yeah that is weird because this is the first time I heard of this issue with the AC68U. The 1900P is pretty much the same router only difference between the original AC68U and newer AC68U/1900P revisions is the clock speed 1 GHz vs 800Mhz in the original. Maybe something like another AP is interfering in the 2.4Ghz range. Some microwaves I know can do that from experience. Also make sure 40Mhz is disabled on 2.4Ghz and manually select a channel that is least congested rather than leaving it on auto. 40Mhz in a congested environment is a nightmare for both you and your neighbors.

[MSerm]

Exactly, the RT-AC1900P is actually a 1.4 ghz, vs. 1 ghz or 800 mhz for the RT-AC68U, as it has a newer CPU revision C0 I believe.

I already have 2.4 ghz (on both routers even the one at work) set to 20 mhz only, and channel 3,4 manually (nothing else visible on these).

So I'll be testing the office router at home, and also my router without any devices connected, to see if I can nail this issue down.

And since I'm only seeing this issue on 1 device (the laptop with Intel adapter), I'm not expecting it to be related to any type of interference ...

[ATell1]

Only other thing that I can think of; do you have a USB 3.0 device connected, it can cause interference in the 2.4Ghz spectrum? The Router I believe doesn't have proper shielding and there is an option to reduce USB 3.0 interference in the settings. Also make sure any external drive has a well shielded cable. Some cheap drive enclosures come with low quality cables. Other than that Bluetooth is another possibility of 2.4Ghz interference along with older 2.4Ghz cordless phones.

[MSerm]

I don't use the USB ports, and cordless phones are newer panasonic ones (about a year old).

I believe they've added shielding to the 1900P, as well as newer 68U revisions ...

I would think interference should also show up on other devices I have, Macbook Pro, iPad's, etc.

[MSerm]

Update: I've disconnected all ethernet devices & all wireless devices from my router,

but the issue was still happening,... with no other devices connected but the laptop.

Next, I will grab the router from work and try on the RTAC68U instead of my RTAC1900P.

[MSerm]

Update 2: I've tried on a regular RT-AC68U from work (brought it home to test)

and the exact same issue was happening ...

This is pretty confusing as I wasn't seeing any issues with the same router at the office,

but I will re-test at the office again because something tells me I should be seeing issues.

What's interesting is that we've just upgraded our office router from a RT-N66U to that

RT-AC68U and for the first time ever one of my co-workers said his laptop's wireless

connection was acting up, and he has a really old Intel Wifi Link 5100 agn ...