# New PCIE Wifi Card running slow?



## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Hello! I recently acquired a new "Top of the line" wifi card but it happens to be running a lot slower than it should be. It is an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz Card by EDUP. It is the EP-9651GS model. Any information or help would be greatly appreciated!


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## ArdWar (Dec 30, 2021)

What do you mean by "slow"? Is it the network speed or internet speed? Have you tested your network with other WiFi card?

780 Mbps link speed looks like you connected to an AC WiFi. On the other hand your ~80 Mbps data rate (9GB / 16.5 min) looks like from a 100BASE-TX.


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## Bill_Bright (Dec 30, 2021)

Not sure what you mean by "Top of the line"? Great card, but there are better adapters. That is not a criticism, just an observation.

It should be pointed out that published capabilities, especially for wifi speeds, are ideal under ideal conditions.

Many things can adversely affect speeds, including distance to WAP (wireless access point), antenna position and orientation, number and type of barriers (walls, floors, ceilings, wallboard, concrete) between endpoints, contents of those barriers (wires, metal pipes), nearby networks, number of connected devices, nearby EMI/RFI sources, nearby reflective items (metal filing cabinets, refrigerators), and more - not least of which is the WAP itself. 

I suggest, if not already there, you move your computer into the same room. Keep the distance between the adapter's antennas and the WAP's at a minimum with a straight LOS (line of sight - nothing in the way to attenuate the signal). And use a packet sniffer to select an unused, preferably isolated (free adjacent) channel. 

I use XIRRUS WiFi Inspector on my notebook to see what wireless channels are in use and available. NirSoft's WifiInfoView is another good one. As are Acrylic WiFi Home and Homedale. The best is arguably inSSIDer but sadly, it is no longer free .

For Android phones there is WiFi Analyzer. And for iPhones, check out Fing Network Scanner.

The best solution is to find an unused channel where neither of its adjacent channels are in use either. The better WAPs will auto-select the best channel. But not always and manual selection may be necessary, if possible. If all channels are in use, look for the least crowded channel with the wifi network that has the weakest signal strength. When you have determined the best channel to use, go into your Router/WAP's admin menu and manually select that channel. You do not have to make any changes to your wireless devices. They will pick up and use the new channel automatically.


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## Aquinus (Dec 30, 2021)

Natessnake said:


> Hello! I recently acquired a new "Top of the line" wifi card but it happens to be running a lot slower than it should be. It is an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz Card by EDUP. It is the EP-9651GS model. Any information or help would be greatly appreciated!


Could you clarify what you mean by slow? This looks like AC speeds as @ArdWar said. You should also keep in mind that the reported speed is not the maximum speed in a single direction, at least not in Linux and MacOS. For example, MacOS claims I'm connected at 1,300 Mbps. In reality, the raw throughput is half of that in either direction under ideal situations. Welcome to the world of WiFi.


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

I put "top of the line" in quotes because it was the best PCIe wifi card I could actually find when I looked forever. But in the screenshot, you can see that for some reason it says no network access next to IPV6 connectivity, and the speed in that picture is 780.0 Mbps but usually get stuck/capped at 600.0. Didn't seem like a problem at first until I started downloading a game on steam at 7MBps when I use to get no less than 15-20MBps on my old wifi USB adapter that is over 5-7 years old. That is what I mean by slow...

EDIT: also we have a commercial wifi server (like with a switch and all kinds of stuff, not just a normal router) that my brother built because that's what he does for a living. This is located 1 room away right next to me, so pretty much one wall between me and it.


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## Selaya (Dec 30, 2021)

means your ISP doesn't support (native) ipv6, or your router doesn't on the wifi part or something


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Selaya said:


> means your ISP doesn't support (native) ipv6, or your router doesn't on the wifi part or something


Never had that problem with my old adapter. Doesn't make sense for a brand new PCIe wifi card to perform worse than a USB wifi adapter that is many many years old.


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## Selaya (Dec 30, 2021)

how old was that?
its possible that if its old enough it didnt have ipv6 support at all


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Selaya said:


> how old was that?
> its possible that if its old enough it didnt have ipv6 support at all


roughly 7-8 years old. It was a Netgear A6100 USB WiFi Adapter. Came out in 2013. That for some reason runs faster than this brand new PCIe Wifi Adapter card. Would get 15-20MBps in steam with the USB adapter and now I am only getting 7-9MBps with my new PCIe Card. So you may be right that it probably didn't support IPV6 and I just found out that my brother doesn't even have it set up on our server router. Still wouldnt make sense for the old usb adapter to run 2x faster than the new pcie card. especially if neither of them were/are using ipv6


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## Selaya (Dec 30, 2021)

may not mean anything, could just be your dsl/fiber being spastic.

you'd have to run an iperf on another local location or something


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Selaya said:


> may not mean anything, could just be your dsl/fiber being spastic.
> 
> you'd have to run an iperf on another local location or something


Doesn't make sense that something 7 years old is performing better than something 1-year-old. Especially 3 times slower. I don't understand how it could just be my DSL/fiber being dumb. I can plug in my old USB dongle and get better speeds. It just doesn't make sense to me at all, especially when you know very little about wifi in general.


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## Selaya (Dec 30, 2021)

could be a lot of factors.
did you install intel drivers for the aic?


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Selaya said:


> could be a lot of factors.
> did you install intel drivers for the aic?


Do you mean the ax210 intel driver for the PCIe card? Yes... all drivers are up to date. None of this makes sense to me. The PCIe card speed is being capped at 866.7 but mainly staying around 600-650.0... and between 7-9MBps on steam. I just put in my old USB wifi dongle and tried that to see the difference. Says the speed for that is around 300.0-450.0 but around the same exact speed for steam, if not a little faster. How could the "speed" be a 400Mbps difference but have nearly the same speeds in steam?


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## Selaya (Dec 30, 2021)

because your local wifi's not your bottleneck. your adsl is.


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Selaya said:


> because your local wifi's not your bottleneck. your adsl is.


Could you elaborate? my apologies.


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## Bill_Bright (Dec 30, 2021)

Natessnake said:


> I put "top of the line" in quotes because it was the best PCIe wifi card I could actually find when I looked forever.


Okay. That make sense. I was worried you bought it from someone who was making false claims.

Are you sure your ISP supports IPv6? I am not sure all do. Does *ipconfig /all* from an elevated cmd prompt show anything for IPv6? Don't worry. The /all option only displays status. It makes no changes.


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Bill_Bright said:


> Okay. That make sense. I was worried you bought it from someone who was making false claims.
> 
> Are you sure your ISP supports IPv6? I am not sure all do. Does *ipconfig /all* from an elevated cmd prompt show anything for IPv6? Don't worry. The /all option only displays status. It makes no changes.


Im pretty sure my isp does support it but i know for a fact my brother has it disabled on our Server/AP. When i do *ipconfig /all *i can only see my IPv4 address. Nothing shows anything about IPv6... but that would also mean that my old USB dongle also was not using IPv6. But for some reason im being bottlenecked or capped off way less than the speeds we pay our ISP for...


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## Selaya (Dec 30, 2021)

i mean if you disabled it on your router why, _of course_ you'll not have ipv6.

as for the bottleneck, it means that your wifi is way faster than what your adsl (internet connection) is, so your upgrade was pointless (well, not quite unless you dont have an NAS or something either but yeah).


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Selaya said:


> i mean if you disabled it on your router why, _of course_ you'll not have ipv6.
> 
> as for the bottleneck, it means that your wifi is way faster than what your adsl (internet connection) is, so your upgrade was pointless (well, not quite unless you dont have an NAS or something either but yeah).


No NAS setup, just a normal home personal use system that happens to be commercial grade. But what do you mean by "your wifi is way faster than what your ADSL (internet connection) is" from our isp directly to our "router/server" or ap is 600Mbps, (we pay for near gigabit speeds but you never get what you pay for of course.) but I am only getting 70mbps of the 600-700. both on the 7-year-old USB dongle and the new PCIe card. What would be the reason for that? I feel like im missing something here. through the router/server its showing that my PC is getting the 600 but speed test and steam is proving otherwise.


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## Selaya (Dec 30, 2021)

looks like your isp isnt delivering what they've promised

do a speedtest: https://speedtest.net


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

Selaya said:


> looks like your isp isnt delivering what they've promised
> 
> do a speedtest: https://speedtest.net


Yeah it isnt, getting around 1/2-3/4 of what we pay for from the ISP directly to the router. But im still only getting a very small fraction of that. We pay for near gigabit speeds, ISP is providing 600-700Mbps directly to the router, but im only getting barely 70Mbps out of that 600-700...


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## looniam (Dec 30, 2021)

Natessnake said:


> Yeah it isnt, getting around 1/2-3/4 of what we pay for from the ISP directly to the router. But im still only getting a very small fraction of that. We pay for near gigabit speeds, ISP is providing 600-700Mbps directly to the router, but im only getting barely 70Mbps out of that 600-700...


spectrum?


Spoiler: NSFW language


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## Natessnake (Dec 30, 2021)

looniam said:


> spectrum?
> 
> 
> Spoiler: NSFW language


1gb is what we are promised from our ISP(Armstrong) but like 600-700 is provided to the router and around 50-70 of that is what I'm receiving on my PC.... WIFI not Hardwired...


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## Blue4130 (Dec 31, 2021)

Natessnake said:


> Yeah it isnt, getting around 1/2-3/4 of what we pay for from the ISP directly to the router. But im still only getting a very small fraction of that. We pay for near gigabit speeds, ISP is providing 600-700Mbps directly to the router, but im only getting barely 70Mbps out of that 600-700...


Are you on 2.4g or 5g channel? 70mbps sounds a lot like 2.4g.


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## Deleted member 202104 (Dec 31, 2021)

^^^ This ^^^


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## Natessnake (Dec 31, 2021)

weekendgeek said:


> ^^^ This ^^^


5gh thats why its weird


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## Selaya (Dec 31, 2021)

move your computer to the router and plug in the ethernet (just for testing/debug), then do another speedtest

if you have another computer/server/piece of equipment, run an iperf against those two
you may even be able to run the iperf against the router, but that may depend on manufacturer/os


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## 1freedude (Jan 1, 2022)

Physical location is super important when troubleshooting these types of issues.  Where was the old adapter's antenna?  Compare that to the location of new antennas.  Remember, the wavelength of 5GHz is approx 5cm, and movement of an inch or two in any direction might improve the rate.  I'm guessing the new nic has antennas right near the case.  This can help or hurt.


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## delshay (Jan 1, 2022)

The last time I checked if I connect to an access point which has Wi-Fi 5 & use the default Intel Wi-Fi settings in the driver, it runs slower. Not sure if this is a bug but it's supposed to be backwards compatible, If I switch off the 6GHz settings in the Intel driver, full speed returns. It seems if you don't have 6GHz enabled in the router, turn it off also in the Intel driver. Please note what i'm saying here, you may not have this problem, but it's something I found.


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## micropage7 (Jan 1, 2022)

sorry if i missed something but have you tried to assign the manual ip for your device? just to check if it affect the speed too


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## Aquinus (Jan 1, 2022)

Blue4130 said:


> Are you on 2.4g or 5g channel? 70mbps sounds a lot like 2.4g.


^ This. Full speed 802.11AC should give you between 350 and 600Mbps under the best of situations. 70Mbps sounds like a 40Mhz wide 2.4Ghz connection.


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