Wireless
Participate in insightful discussions regarding issues related to Intel® Wireless Adapters and technologies
7368 Discussions

Intel Wi_Fi 6 AX201 slowness FIPS

striderdeano
Novice
17,754 Views

We use Dell Latitude platform clients in our enterprise domain w/AX201 cards. While accessing our Cisco AP's we have implement FIPS (Toggled the “Enable Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliance for this network” option under 802.11 settings.) The specs state this card is FIPS compliant (Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 Module 130293). However, download/upload speeds are less than 1Mbps.

Manufacturer: Intel Corporation

Description: Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz

Driver version: 22.20.0.7

Protocol: Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac)

Security type: WPA2-Enterprise

The newest drivers didn't help, forcing the driver to AC mode didn't help, disabling FIPS allowed download/uploads speeds to the expected 40-80Mbps but disabling is not an option per Cyber.

Any ideas?

thank in advance,

Dean

27 Replies
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
14,023 Views

Hello striderdeano,

 

Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities.

 

In order to better assist you please provide the following report and information from one of the affected computers so we can move forward with your request.

 

-Intel® System Support Utility (Intel® SSU)

 

Download link: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility-for-Windows-

 

•          Open the application and click on "Scan" to see the system and device information

•          By default, Intel® SSU will take you to the "Summary View".  

•          Click on the menu where it says "Summary" to change to "Detailed View".  

•          To save your scan, click on "Next", then "Save".

 

Use the option under the reply window to attach the report to the thread (Drag and drop here or browse files to attach).

 

-Can you please provide the exact model of access points you are currently using?

 

-Is it the same behavior if you use the drivers provided by Dell or have you only tested ours?

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Regards,

 

Victor G.

Intel Technical Support Technician  

 

0 Kudos
striderdeano
Novice
13,994 Views

Victor,

Attached is the redacted out from SSU.

The slowness using MS, Dell and Intel provided drivers

Cisco AP = AIR-AP2802I-B-K9

0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,991 Views

Hello striderdeano,


Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities.


We appreciate the information you have provided, please allow us to do further research on our end in regards to your situation, we will update the thread as soon as possible.


Regards,


Victor G. 

Intel Technical Support Technician 


0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,985 Views

Hello striderdeano,

 

Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities.


Based on the problem that you guys have been experiencing with your laptops, what we recommend will be to try our latest released driver, please performed a clean installation of it and let us know if the issues persist.


Instructions


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000022173/network-and-io/wireless.html


Notes:


-If the installation of the .exe file is unsuccessful you can try with the .zip version of the driver by following the steps below:


1-Save the .zip file from the driver download link on the computer.


2-Go to Device Manager.


3-Expand the Network Adapters category.


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


5-Make sure to select the option to Delete the driver software for this device.


6-Repeat steps 3 through 5 until the option to Delete the driver software for this device is greyed out.


7- Right-click your Intel Wireless Adapter


8-Select Update driver.


9-Click Browse my computer for driver software.


10-Click Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.


11-Click Have Disk.


12-Click Browse. Select the location where the driver files are located.


13-Click Next. Drivers are now being installed.


14-Reboot the computer when prompted

 

-After you download the drivers disconnect from the Internet, so no new drivers are automatically installed by Windows Update while the instructions are been followed.

 

Latest driver version 22.30.0


.exe


https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/30208/Windows-10-Wi-Fi-Drivers-for-Intel-Wireless-Adapters


.zip


https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/30207/Intel-PROSet-Wireless-Software-and-Drivers-for-IT-Admins


I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Regards,

 

Victor G.

Intel Technical Support Technician  


0 Kudos
striderdeano
Novice
13,976 Views

Victor,

Thank you for your follow up.

After following the uninstall instruction and reinstalling with 22.30.0.11, there is no appreciable change in download speeds. .4Mbps..... Yesterday I was able get the FIPS group policy lifted on the Precision 3551 and the download speeds jumped to 40Mbps plus. We are implementing FIPS via GP. 

To manually enable FIPS mode only when connected to a specific network, perform the following steps:

  1. Open the Control Panel window.
  2. Click “View network status and tasks” under Network and Internet.
  3. Click “Change adapter settings.”
  4. Right-click the network you want to enable FIPS for and select “Status.”
  5. Click the “Wireless Properties” button in the Wi-Fi Status window.
  6. Click the “Security” tab in the network properties window.
  7. Click the “Advanced settings” button.
  8. Toggle the “Enable Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliance for this network” option under 802.11 settings.

I can duplicate the .4 Mbps download on any wireless connection including non-enterprise with this flag set.

Any more ideas?

 

Deano

0 Kudos
QAJS
Beginner
13,960 Views

Hey Victor, 

I am an analyst on this case with striderdeano. 

 

I went out and did some testing as well with him across a couple different devices and several different settings. 

 

We experienced the same issues regardless of Windows installation (our site image vs OEM), or wireless network (always capped at most ~22mbps with FIPS enabled, despite multiple other devices reaching speeds up to 300mbps on the same network with FIPS enabled).

 

We also tested on another network with different gear, running regular residential wireless equipment with a 100mbps connection. This wireless card, with FIPS enabled, reached 22mbps at most. With FIPS disabled, it reach up to 90mbps. Testing another wireless device the same method on the same network, we got 80-90Mbps for both tests (FIPS enabled and FIPS disabled).

 

We experience <1Mbps speeds when activating our VPN solution while being on site. No other devices / wireless cards have had this issue. With FIPS disabled and the VPN disconnected on site, we get up to 300mbps as I said, but with FIPS enabled and VPN disconnected the laptop can't go above ~22mbps. Enabling the VPN leads to drops as low as 0.3mbps. It seems to be some sort of bug with the card and FIPS protocols. 

 

Hope this additional information helps. 

0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,863 Views

Hello striderdeano,

 

Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities.

 

Please allow us more time to look into this and we will update the thread as soon as possible.

 

Regards,

 

Victor G.

Intel Technical Support Technician  


0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,836 Views

Hello striderdeano,


Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities.


To continue with the research on our end and with your assistance can you please provide the following information:


  1. How many systems are been affected?
  2. Do all the affected systems have the same adapters? If not please provide the other adapter models affected?
  3. When did the issue start?
  4. Are these systems old or new?
  5. Is any of the adapters affected a replacement of the original adapter that came originally installed in the system?
  6. Have you guys tried with different networks?
  7. Did you contact Cisco support?
  8. Are you guys running the latest firmware in your Cisco Aps?

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Regards,

 

Victor G.

Intel Technical Support Technician  


0 Kudos
QAJS
Beginner
13,830 Views
  1. How many systems are been affected? At least a dozen or 2 laptop machines. All systems we have tested with AX-201 cards. I believe some devices we have with AX-200 cards were also having the issue, but I will leave that to striderdeano to answer for sure. 
  2. Do all the affected systems have the same adapters? If not please provide the other adapter models affected? I believe all the devices we know for sure have the issue are running AX-201 wireless adapters.

  3. When did the issue start? The issue was first noticed upon use of the devices being connected to our Enterprise network over WiFi. 

  4. Are these systems old or new? Brand new.

  5. Is any of the adapters affected a replacement of the original adapter that came originally installed in the system? No adapters have been replaced. All are original OEM equipment. 

  6. Have you guys tried with different networks? In a previous posting, I posted detailed information about how we connected to different wireless networks entirely and got the same results with FIPS enabled in Windows for those wireless connections. 

  7. Did you contact Cisco support? We have not contacted Cisco support as this issue is happening with wireless networks not running Cisco devices as well, and other devices are not having the same issue.

  8. Are you guys running the latest firmware in your Cisco Aps? Yes. Release notes say they were tested with AX200 cards.
0 Kudos
Forsi
Beginner
13,819 Views

Hi,

I'm facing same issue with Ax201 in my brand new laptop dell inspiron 5406 2in1 (intel i7 11gen.),

speed is very low, and connection loss every several minutes, I tried everything i seems the problem is the wifi card AX201, everything is works fine other P.C, phones. I event tried to connect to another network   

0 Kudos
Forsi
Beginner
13,818 Views

Hi,

I'm facing same issue with Ax201 in my brand new laptop dell inspiron 5406 2in1 (intel i7 11gen.),

speed is very low, and connection loss every several minutes, I tried everything i seems the problem is the wifi card AX201, everything is works fine other P.C, phones. I event tried to connect to another network 

0 Kudos
striderdeano
Novice
13,624 Views

To continue with the research on our end and with your assistance can you please provide the following information:

 

  1. How many systems are been affected? greater that 50 systems
  2. Do all the affected systems have the same adapters? If not please provide the other adapter models affected? They all have the AX201 adapter.
  3. When did the issue start? This issue was noticed as end users returned to our wireless Enterprise environment from Covid lock downs.
  4. Are these systems old or new? These are all Latitude and Precision mobile platforms with the AX201 wireless cards.
  5. Is any of the adapters affected a replacement of the original adapter that came originally installed in the system? We replaced the AX201 with a Qualcomm 1AX709, this eliminated the extreme slowness. 20-30 Mbps was achieved in all environments.
  6. Have you guys tried with different networks? The slowness only occurs in wireless connection that have the FIPS compliant requirement enable. All home and Enterprise networks function as expected (over 20MBbps) as long as the FIPS compliancy is not enabled.
  7. Did you contact Cisco support? I do not believe this is an AP issue. The slowness can be replicated across Linksys, LTE hotspots and even Starlink.
  8. Are you guys running the latest firmware in your Cisco Aps? The newest firmware was pushed to all our Cisco APs early in our troubleshooting.
0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,808 Views

Hello QAJS,

 

Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities.

 

We appreciate the information you have provided, and we are going to use it to see if we can move forward. We’ll be in touch in case we need anything else.


@striderdeano would you mind letting us know how many systems are been affected?

 

Regards,

 

Victor G.

Intel Technical Support Technician  


0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,768 Views

Hello @striderdeano,

 

cc: @QAJS

 

Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities.

 

In order for us to investigate this issue further, attached to this case is a check list that we need you guys to fill up so we can move forward, besides that, can you please confirm the following:

 

  1. Have you guys tested this issue with the 802.1X protocol?
  2. Are all the machines affected running the same Windows build 18363 or have they all been updated to build 19042?

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Regards,

 

Victor G.

Intel Technical Support Technician

 

0 Kudos
MrWizard
Beginner
13,725 Views

I am in the same group as striderdeano.  I can verify I have reproduced the problem on both Win10 Enterprise 1909 and 2009.

0 Kudos
striderdeano
Novice
13,622 Views
  1. Have you guys tested this issue with the 802.1X protocol? Yes, 802.1x protocols have been in place for years. 
  2. Are all the machines affected running the same Windows build 18363 or have they all been updated to build 19042? This slowness can be replicated in 1909 and 20H2 builds. 

 

0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,732 Views

Hello striderdeano,


Were you able to check the previous post?  


Please let me know if you need further assistance.  


Best regards,


Victor G. 

Intel Technical Support Technician


0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,617 Views

Hello striderdeano,

 

Thank you for posting on the Intel® communities.

 

We appreciate the information provided. In order for us to investigate this issue further with our development team, attached to this case is a checklist that we need you guys to fill up so we can move forward. 

 

Regards,

 

Victor G.

Intel Technical Support Technician

 

0 Kudos
Victor_G_Intel
Moderator
13,586 Views

Hello striderdeano,


Were you able to check the previous post?  


Please let me know if you need further assistance.  


Best regards,


Victor G. 

Intel Technical Support Technician


0 Kudos
striderdeano
Novice
13,399 Views

We have been forced to migrate to the Qualcomm AX709 card for connections requiring FIPS compliance. See attached per your request. (Most of this info was available as part of this discussion?????)

0 Kudos
Reply