Intel AC7260 problems

[NK5]

Hi there, I just excitedly bought 3 AC7260 cards for all our laptops in the house cause we upgraded our router to the RT-AC66U and let me tell you I am soooooo NOT impressed with these cards. They are horrible, I cannot keep a consistent connection with my router.

Computer # 1 is a Dell 7720 running windows 8 and all I keep getting is constant unable to access network page errors that only say on a chrome web page:

Error code: ERR_NETWORK_CHANGED

In my intel event viewer I get around 3 lines marked Information..... authenticating wireless profile XXXXX every minute!!!!!! This can't be right???

Computer # 2 is an XPS 15 running windows 7 home and I get the same problems as computer # 1 just not as many chrome ERR pages.

Computer # 3 is an Alienware M18 and it consistantly drops the wireless connection too. I had a bigfoot card in there previously and NEVER had any problems with losing wireless connections.

I'm using all the latest newest drivers on all my laptops and i just can't believe how troublesome these 7260's are. Anyone else actually have a 7260 thats rock solid and if so, how did you do it?

[tvete]

@ bacon612

It's your Windows and software configurations conflicting with drivers (most likely) as well as probably RF noise (least likely if other devices don't have ping spikes) in both bands that causes your ping spikes to appear like that.

Mine has no ping spikes greater than 10 ms with 16.8.0.6 drivers with perfect stability and performance.

Do a clean boot (use a search engine to know more) and test for ping. The best test is to dual boot to a fresh OS with no 3rd party software and test for ping with that.

[MBona2]

Could someone explain to me how ICMP is a good test to indicate wireless quality? Ping only tests L3 connectivity and gives no feedback for the Wireless (L2/L1). ICMP is connection-less and resembles UDP(kind of). The wireless card inside of the device is what changes information(your screen stuff) and changes it to voltages(L1). Then, that same wireless card changes the voltages(L1) into radio frequency (L2) and transmits QAM signals. The wireless "collision domain" is just like a hub. Every wireless client/access point can hear every other wireless transmission and has to wait until the airspace is clear from signals before it can transmit. Ping spikes could indicate a multitude of problems. I suggest starting your troubleshooting at the layer 1 level, and work your way up the OSI model until you find the root cause of the problem. Most likely it is your drivers. This is a new product, right?

[JMcKa]

wifi,

My particular issue, demonstrated with ping spikes, is that while watching live TV with a HDHomeRun, it will occasionally glitch and the DVB stream will be interrupted. It is a UDP stream, so the ping test is the closest I can come to give me numbers to measure and compare

This issue was not apparent on a different USB stick wifi with dualband RALink chipset in the same location...

[vkotl]

was able to connect at both 2.4 and 5ghz after updating drivers and windows. the previous version never connected at 5 ghz . didnt test the bluetooth. so far satisfied with the connection at 5 ghz and 2.4ghz with good throughput but the ping spikes are annoying please fix this intel.

[tvete]

With Joe talking about the 17.0.2 fix for those who have WiFi problems, you can finally get one here by PMing the Lenovo staff here: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-Edge-S-series/Re-ThinkPad-S440-WiFi-problem/td-p/1293949/page/12 Re: ThinkPad S440 WiFi problem - Page 12 - Lenovo Community

[NChua5]

interesting nice find. i'll just wait. thanks for the heads up.

[vkotl]

after i updated windows the issue was fixed i do not know how and im able to connect at 5 GHz, though ping suffers a bit to the router goes upto 10ms to 20ms sometimes, still everything is good

[tvete]

That's good. Microsoft also releases fixes to Windows and it indeed helps. If you can keep the max ping to 10 - 20 ms (preferably 10 or below) when pinging router 500 times, your ping spike issues should be solved.

[vkotl]

the max ping went to about 250ms but when i tested with another laptop beside me with a different card the max ping it had was 450 ms and also had some requests timed out. im feeling intel card is better here,most of the time im getting an average of 11 ms ping with ac 7260 and average of 16 ms with the other card. by the way there about 10 devices connect to my router all time .though i feel intel can do a better job

[tvete]

Well, it seems it's probably the router or most probably it's just that multiple devices are sharing the airwaves (same frequency) which can cause a slight delay with ping. At home, I'm the only one who uses the 5 GHz frequency thus giving those low consistent pings. 11 ms isn't bad. It'll just give a few more (less than 10 most of the time) latency compared to wired when gaming. The only bad thing is the spikes where it can really be annoying. 450 ms ping with packet loss is just bad lol. I do think Intel 7260 is doing perfect already considering that it can get consistent 0-10 ms ping when not sharing any radios from other devices on the same frequency and just 11 ms average on a busy RF environment.

[vkotl]

hmm i just pinged the router and there are big ping spikes of 250ms with intel dual band ac 7260 every 5 mins at 5 Ghz band. i guess intel needs to fix this. the minimum ping with other laptops is about 2ms whereas with 7260 is 6ms to my router

[tvete]

5 minutes is 300 seconds so I just did a ping test and I got 2 ms as the max ping and 0 ms average with 300 times ping to router. I don't turn off my "desktop replacement" (doesn't even have the 1/3 processing power of a true desktop) laptop unless it has updates from Windows or I needed to perform my laptop cleaning so it just stays connected for about 15 days max without ever dropping the WiFi. I just use a cheap $25 refurb Netgear WNDR3400v1 from Amazon and it amazingly performs well though throughput is limited to 90 - 95 Mbps due to fast Ethernet.

It might just be your router is prioritizing your other laptops with QoS management though ping spikes to 250 ms is a concern. DPC latency can also cause those spikes so you try troubleshooting starting from there as well.

[vkotl]

annoying ping spike every 4 mins with 17.0.0.34 drivers

[tvete]

I guess your router is getting too much utilisation resulting to a bit higher latency. Since you have a lot of devices whereas mine only has 3 phones (most of the time idling), 4 laptops and a printer (I'm the only one who's using the 5 Ghz) you can try using a more powerful router or your router just needs a firmware update.

[NChua5]

i doubt that's his issue. i have a Asus N900 router with only a printer, desktop, and laptop connected. I am the only user at any given moment and I still get ping spikes.

[RHout]

Hi dell7720

I also had problems with this adapter initially. However after locating the correct drivers it's working great.

Connected at 866.7Mbps to Aruba IAP225. Configuring the WAP for AC was a little challenging but now it's working great.

Have you verified if you have the same problems connecting to other WiFi networks?

[Jose_H_Intel1]

For those who were not able to fix the connection drops issue with the latest drivers, we are looking for volunteers willing to assist providing information and testing drivers. The people who would like to help with this task must be using our latest driver and still have connection drops. Please note these important considerations:

• Be a technical savvy person in wireless networking.
• Be willing to install/uninstall drivers and provide feedback.
• Have software skills. If possible, knowledgeable in software debugging.

In order to participate please send an e-mail to the Intel® Support Center indicating that you would like to contribute with driver testing or send me a private message with your contact information.

E- Mail support for North America: http://www.intel.com/support/mailform/networking/wireless/emailsupport.htm http://www.intel.com/support/mailform/networking/wireless/emailsupport.htm

E- Mail support for the rest of the world: http://www.intel.com/support/mailform/networking/wireless/email_support.htm http://www.intel.com/support/mailform/networking/wireless/email_support.htm

[idata]

I've had the same issue with this card (Win 8.1 64bit) and my Asus RT-AC66U router on my 802.11ac network. There are only two laptops using this network, only one other 5ghz network. And I constantly get connection drops, which is very annoying when I try to SSH anything as I keep losing the connection. The latest driver definitely does not improve the situation at all. Very frustrating. I don't have any other cards for 802.11ac, but I have the same problems on the 2.4ghz network with this card while all other devices on the 2.4ghz network have no issues. I'm tempted to replace it, it's so frustrating. Symptoms are the same as reported by others, ping becomes slow then wlan doesn't work at all for a few seconds and then recovers. Every couple of minutes.

Pinging 192.168.0.2 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=109ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=99ms TTL=64

Request timed out.

Request timed out.

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64

[tvete]

@ TomB

Try clean install Windows and see if you get consistent pings. I never had ping spikes and dropped packets @ 5 GHz but I do get those once in a while @ 2.4 GHz due to overcrowded channels and RF interference.

If it's still like that, the card isn't fully functional on your laptop or you just have 5 Ghz interference at your location.

[vkotl]

ive tried everything. i have an asus external usb wifi card and i get smooth ping with it in the same laptop. i use insider to check interference and there is no interference at 5 GHz

[MBona2]

theveterans-

The PING utility is a separate program contained within Windows. Implying a re-install of Windows to fix PING is pretty weird to me. If the PING utility isn't corrupt, and Windows isn't corrupt, then it's probably something else. Try to figure out why there is a loss of connectivity by investigating the wireless drivers, and what process is failing. From the posts, it looks like PING is working just fine. It's telling us that there is latency AND packet loss. Packet loss is more important here. What is causing the packet loss? Maybe the wireless NIC? That's where all of the packets are flowing through first, right?

Here is how wireless works from a client's intitiation:

1. Associate to access point
2. Authenticate to access point(PEAP,WEP,WPA,WPA2,802.1x,)
3. Get IP address from DHCP
4. Redo the process if roaming or reconnecting for some reason

Numbers one and two is where all of the wireless communication is happening. If numbers 1 and 2 work, then wireless is not broken. If there is something keeping numbers 1 and 2 from working correctly, then everything else down the chain will be broken. There are many log files in Windows that may lead you in the right direction. I have found the "WLAN-Autoconfig" log in the Event Viewer to be helpful when troubleshooting client problems. Start at the bottom, and work your way up the chain of events.

It sounds like the issues are more prevalent to Win8 users.