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Very poor wireless reception of NUC D54250WYK with AN6235

BWang42
Beginner
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Just bought a D54250WYK and a Advanced-N 6235 wireless adapter.

I am aware that there are quite some complaints on the forum about 6235 card working with the NUC, that the network connection drops every once in a while. Upgrading to the latest BIOS seems will solve the problem.

My problem here, however, is different. It's not that the connection drops, but it just cannot connect to the network when it's relatively weak.

I know the signal is not very strong in my house -- the NUC is placed in my sleeping room but the router is in the living room, and there are two walls in between. I also have lots of interference from the neighbors. Anyway, my two laptops can still show full signal bars when using at the same place in the sleeping room, and all my two phones and one tablet also work fine without any connection drop although the signal bars are not full.

The NUC, however, cannot even connect to the network most of the time. Even when it somehow connected, it's every unstable and drops the connection every a few minutes due to the weak signal, and the speed is always limited around 0.5 Mbps.

I took the NUC to my office where the AP is just 2 meters away, and it seems work well, but even then the signal showed in the notification area fluctuated between 4-5 bars.

Windows 8.1 64-bit is freshly installed with all latest updates, all drivers are the latest. I also confirmed the two antennas are firmly attached and color matched with the manual, and I also confirmed the antennas are well soldered and attached on the top panel of the case by taking out the motherboard.

I can't believe this little box has even worse reception than a mobile phone...This is barely usable.

Any ideas?

Many thanks,

b

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8 Replies
Silvia_L_Intel1
Employee
807 Views

Hello Boday, I am moving this thread to the correct community to they can help you solving your issue.

Regards,

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BWang42
Beginner
807 Views

Thank you. But actually it seems the problem is more related to the nuc itself, because...

As I did a few more test today, I found when I install the wireless card into one of my laptop, it works perfectly fine when I put it at the same position in my home - even better reception than the Atheros one came with the laptop.

So the problem is on the nuc side.

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Kevin_M_Intel
Employee
807 Views

Hello boday,

Let me help you with this. All the information you have provided is very helpful for us to understand and have a clear picture of issue you are facing with the product.

Testing the adapter on another system is definitely the best step to discard issues with the card but I would like you to try some other steps:

  1. I understand you have installed the latest BIOS version but just in case do a BIOS recovery with the latest version again. Here is the download: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=24269 https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=24269

  1. Try uninstalling the Wireless driver from Device manager and download it again:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=24220 https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=24220

  1. For testing purposes, try disabling the UAPSD feature. Here you have information in how to do it:

http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-034875.htm http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-034875.htm

  1. Try setting the Channel Bonding option on the driver option set for 20 MHz. Check this link for more information:

http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/sb/CS-025343.htm http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/sb/CS-025343.htm

For testing purposes, you can also try using the NUC near the Router you have and let us know how it goes.

Kevin M

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BWang42
Beginner
807 Views

Hi Kevin,

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. My test results are as follow:

1. I did a recovery of the bios again and found somehow the one I flashed last time was not the latest one, but was the one back in July - still much newer than the original one though...Anyway, after upgrading the bios the problem is still there.

2. I uninstall and delete the driver files and did a re-installation. No improvement.

3. This is a Advanced-N 6235 card which doesn't support U-APSD.

4. Tried to restrict the channel width of band 5.2 to only 20 MHz. No improvement.

5. Tried to open a hotspot with my phone and put it right next to the nuc, did a speed test, and it can do 20 mbps for both upload and download, which seems good.

A side note of the speed limit: it seems that only the download speed is severely reduced.

I did the same speed tests (provided by the local ISP) in my office and at home, and in both tests upload speed were as expected (full speed, even over a relatively long distance), but download speed were limited: 1 mbps instead of 2 mbps in the office (AP is two meters away), and 0.3 mbps instead of 20 mbps at home (router is about 8 meters away as described in the original post above).

Regards,

b

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Kevin_M_Intel
Employee
807 Views

Thank you for the feedback.

Testing connection speed with online internet speed test is not the best option to get the transfer rate of the wireless card.

The download speed depends on the internet connection provided by the ISP which also can be limited by them. The easiest way to check the Wireless adapter transfer rate is to transfer a file between two computers on your local wireless (without internet) doing a peer to peer. You can refer to this link:

http://support.typewell.com/customer/portal/articles/1259930 http://support.typewell.com/customer/portal/articles/1259930

NOTE: These links are being offered for your convenience and should not be viewed as an endorsement by Intel of the content, products, or services offered there.

You can also try these steps:

  1. Go into BIOS Setup.
  2. Under the Power > Secondary Power Settings menu, disable the option called ASPM Enable Control.
  3. Press F10 to save and exit.
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BWang42
Beginner
807 Views

>Testing connection speed with online internet speed test is not the best option to get the transfer rate of the wireless card.

Yes I know, but as the difference is so obvious when testing at the same time and the same place, I think it's good enough to show the signal reception is quite weak.

>You can also try these steps:

I have tried this already but there was little improvement if at all.

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Kevin_M_Intel
Employee
807 Views

boday in the case you have done all troubleshooting steps mentioned on this thread, please check your private messages.

Kevin M

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BWang42
Beginner
807 Views

Hi,

Since it was still within a month I took the device back to the retailer and got changed for a new one. I tested the new one and found that the performance is basically the same. So I think that this should be a general issue.

b

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