Problem and Fix: AC 9560 160Mhz Wireless connected but no internet

[AndyTheRobot]

Symptoms:

• Network connectivity stops, but wireless reports as connected.
• Cannot ping anything on the wifi, no traffic seems to flow.
• Disconnecting/reconnecting fixes the problem.
• Happens in both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz.
• No other devices on the network were having issues.
• Wlan report considers the session to be still active
• Connections would usually fail like this within a hour, sometimes more frequently. Longest a connection lasted for me was around 1.5 hours.

System:

• Dell Precision 3530 running Win10 1909
• AC 9560 160Hz with driver 21.110.2.1 date 7/21/2020
• TP-Link ARCHER-C7 v2 router running DD-WRT v3.0-r38507 std (01/29/19) firmware.

Fix:

• Network was set to WPA2-Personal TKIP. Changed to WPA2-Personal AES and the problem went away.
• Problem also goes away if the network is open with no security.

Notes:

• Problem started after the Win 1909 upgrade, which also lead to a driver upgrade for the AC 9560.
• Similar issue occurred sometime spring/summer 2020 prior to the Win 1909 upgrade when the driver was upgraded. Rolled back the driver to a 2019 version and the problem went away.
• TKIP setting is actually weird - the router was in a default config where it didn't actually specify (in it's config UI) that it was using TKIP, but that's what Windows reported as in use when connected.

So, not really asking a question but reporting this in case it benefits Intel or others.

[Alberto_Sykes]

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

Thank you very much as well for sharing those details, we are sure that they will be very useful and helpful for all the peers in the Intel® communities viewing this thread and also we will send your feedback to the proper department for them to be aware of your comments.

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

A Contingent Worker at Intel