Intel 7260-AC on 5 GHz: stuck at 173 Mb/s

DragonQ

DragonQ

DragonQ

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I just bought an Intel Wireless-AC 7260 WLAN card for my laptop. Initially the laptop wouldn't even boot with it in in the WLAN slot but once I moved it into the other half-height mini PCIe slot (labelled "1/2 Mini"), it started working. However, I can't get a connection speed of more than 173.3 Mb/s. Occasionally it drops to 152 Mb/s but otherwise it's pretty stable at that speed, even when next to the router.

Does anyone have any suggestions to try to improve the throughput? The router supports 1300 Mb/s and the WLAN card supports 867 Mb/s (I assume 40 MHz only). I've tried these things already:

  • Force 5 GHz band to AC only
  • Force channel width to 40 or 80 MHz
  • Force highest available 5 GHz channel
  • Check WMM is enabled

Specs:
  • Router: TP-Link Archer VR900
  • Laptop: Dell Latitude E6530
  • WLAN card: Intel Wireless-AC 7260

EDIT: Just checked my Galaxy S5 and that is also connecting at 173 Mb/s on the 5 GHz channel. So it looks to be a router issue rather than a problem with the new WLAN card. The fastest I've managed to get it so far is to force the channel to 36 and channel width to 40 MHz. I can get 300-400 Mb/s on both devices using this method.
 
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Getting the same speed on both those devices (the S5 has 2 antennae so should be good for 867 Mbit/s) does suggest the TP-Link is the problem.

You should probably let it choose the channel, and in any case the lower ones are usually better for penetrance (unless it clashes with a neighbour).

You want 80 MHz for now (433 Mbit/s per antenna), not 40.

I'd also give disabling the 2.4 GHz signal a try.
 
When I noticed I was getting 130 Mb/s it was on all default settings, so auto channel, auto channel width, etc. Since I've gotten it to 400 Mb/s, changing settings doesn't seem to make any further difference. I've tried 80 MHz on channel 36, 40, 44, and 48. Disabling 2.4 GHz might work as you say, but I'd rather not do that since that signal is far better when in the garage or outside working on the car, for example.
 
That's the connection speed as shown by the connection properties window. Now I'm seeing up to 400 Mb/s, with an actual file transfer rate of ~30 MB/s. Can't get it to connect at 867 Mb/s.
 
Connection speed shown in properties is meaningless and is not a measure of throughput.

In a dormant state it will always be connecting only as fast as it needs to because radio power and the resultant "connection" speed will be dynamically adjusted based on traffic.

How are you getting a a file transfer rate of 30MB/s? Is the server hard wired to the network or also connected through WiFi? If both the client and server is wireless there's your problem, it's going to half the available total WiFi bandwidth.
 
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^^ That is true a lot of my devices will sit at 24mbit in Windows in an idle state but jump to ~333mbit when doing a download though realistically more like 150mbit sustained (due to wifi congestion in the area). Can't get anywhere near the headline 900mbit speeds for my setup in any useful configuration (where a broad range of devices and usable range is possible) and didn't expect to.
 
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asim18 said:
Connection speed shown in properties is meaningless and is not a measure of throughput.

In a dormant state it will always be connecting only as fast as it needs to because radio power and the resultant "connection" speed will be dynamically adjusted based on traffic.

How are you getting a a file transfer rate of 30MB/s? Is the server hard wired to the network or also connected through WiFi? If both the client and server is wireless there's your problem, it's going to half the available total WiFi bandwidth.
Click to expand...
It sits at 400 Mb/s or near it regardless of how much I'm using the WiFi. I was testing transferring a file to a server connected via Gigabit.
 
All of a sudden today my laptop is switching between being connected at 585, 702, and 867 Mb/s. File transfers from wired server 50-55 MB/s. Haven't changed anything, not even rebooted the thing. :confused:
 
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It's normal for a wireless connection to fluctuate like with any radio broadcast. Download something like Vistumbler and monitor the signal strength and see if it remains stable at a good strength. 80% or higher is excellent. This will also be the idle state strength and will drop if you start transferring data at a higher rate.
 
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DragonQ said:
All of a sudden today my laptop is switching between being connected at 585, 702, and 867 Mb/s. File transfers from wired server 50-55 MB/s. Haven't changed anything, not even rebooted the thing. :confused:
Click to expand...

What you're describing sounds like interference from other 5GHz devices. The 80MHz channel (say channels 100+104+108+112) requires that all those channels are free to get full speed. If they're in use, it won't use those channels (20MHz blocks) and adjust speeds accordingly.

Have you tried all the different 5GHz channels? Ideally, don't use 36-48, they're used too frequently by other devices now, I find I need to use the DFS channels to get full speeds.
 
I can't select any channel outside 36-48, however the router clearly employs DFS because I've seen it pop up on channel 112 before (using WiFi Analyser on my phone).
 
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