AX201 Wi-Fi download speed much lower than upload speed

Mozie · ‎09-09-2023

Hi, Unfortunatley I'm facing a problem with Wi-Fi download speeds on my laptop. It is much lower than the upload speed. I have a Gigabit fiber internet connection, the upload speed reaches easily 850-900 Mbps while download speed barely reaches 300 Mbps. I checked with other laptops and smartphones and they do reach 800-900 download speed on the same network. That means it isn't a modem/router problem. I tried falling back to older driver versions but that didn't solve it, in fact the speeds reduced even further; both download and upload. My laptop: Intel i7 10th gen, Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz. Everything is original, so also AX201, nothing no part of the laptop is changed or upgraded. I hope you guys could help me find the cause and solution. Many thanks in advance

Jose_Intel · ‎09-11-2023

Hello @Mozie

Thank you for posting on the Intel️® communities.

Please confirm the driver version you tested. (The old one).

Let’s try a clean installation of the driver.

Please download the driver from here: Windows® 10 and Windows 11* Wi-Fi Drivers for Intel® Wireless Adapters

Then, uninstall the Wi-Fi driver:

a) Go to Device Manager.

b) Expand the Network Adapters category.

c) Right-click your Intel Wireless Adapter and choose to uninstall it.

d) Make sure to the option to Delete the driver software for this device is selected.

e) Repeat steps A through D until the option to Delete the driver software for this device is greyed out.

f) Restart the computer.

And finally, locate the driver you downloaded and right-click it, then select the option to Run as administrator.

Also, in order to have more information about your system, please download, install and run Intel® System Support Utility for Windows. Make sure you check “Everything” before you scan, then save the report and attach it to your response.

Best regards,

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician

Jose_Intel · ‎09-14-2023

Hello Mozie

We hope you are doing fine.

Were you able to clean install the driver?

Let us know if you still need assistance, do not forget the report.

Best regards,

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician

Jose_Intel · ‎09-20-2023

Hello @Mozie

We hope you are having a nice day.

As we have not received confirmation from you about if our troubleshooting was effective, our recommendation is to check with the OEM. So, we will close this thread. If you need any additional information, submit a new question, as this thread will no longer be monitored.

Best regards.

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

dainbrump · ‎11-07-2023

This does not work for me. Similar issue. I have updated to Windows 11 23H2 and 22.250.1 for the wifi drivers. I am stuck at slightly better than dial-up speeds (~180kbps) on a 2.5gbps fiber connection. All other devices (Android and Linux mixed) report between 200 and 600mpbs. I have 2 Windows 11 machines with the latest windows updates and the latest Intel wifi drivers. One has an AX201 adapter and the other has an AX200 adapter. They are both struggling from the crippled wifi speeds. As a test, I booted up one of the Windows machines to a USB live image of Manjaro Linux and tested the wifi speed to make sure it wasn't a hardware issue. When I tested the speed, it was reported as 612mbps. So I know for a fact that it isn't some hardware gone haywire.

What I have tried:

Uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling with 22.250.1. No change.
Uninstalling the drivers and trying a "rollback" to 22.240.1. Won't install because the 22.250.1 driver is apparently still floating around somewhere and I can't get rid of it no matter how many times I try your "clean install" process.
Flushing DNS cache and resetting winsock. No change.
Windows Network Reset utility. No change.
Windows SFC scan and reboot. No change.
Safe Mode boot with Networking. No change.
Tried forcing Preference to 5ghz. No change.
Changed 802.11a/b/g mode to 5ghz and 2.4ghz. No change for either mode.

Something between 22H2/23H2 and the Intel 22.250.1 drivers pooched something up in a big way. My machine is unusable for most purposes. Thankfully, my primary work machine is on Linux and hasn't had these issues. But I'd be willing to bet there are plenty of other people out there not in my position and struggling with this exact issue.

I've run your support utility and attached the output.