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WiFi 6

cath_sullivan
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

Has anybody else had problems with wifi 6 clients when using the vodafone hub router? I have superfast 2 broadband, in case that's relevant. Recently bought a new windows 10 laptop which should, in most respects, be better than my old one.  However, I've noticed that it is struggling with wifi - seems to have a poorer signal than the old laptop esp on 5ghz (despite being in exactly the same location of the house) and seems also to have a much more variable signal with frequent dropouts.  For most tasks it's not a problem (email, browsing) but it is really causing me problems with MS Teams meetings, which I do a lot of.  It's basically unusable for those meetings, which is a major problem.  I've also got a work laptop, which is a surface pro laptop, and that seems OK wiht Teams, as was my old laptop (again, used in exactly the same part of the house).
I've been trying to figure this problem out, without a great deal of success, but the problems with the new laptop don't seem to occur on ethernet, so it seems to be a wifi issue. The new laptop has wifi 6, which the old one didn't have. I also believe that my work laptop only has wifi 5.  I understand that the vodafone router is wifi 5 too.  So, I am starting to wonder if there is some kind of issue related to connecting a wifi 6 client to the vodafone router.  Everything I've read says that they are meant to be backwards compatible, so maybe I am clutching at straws here, but it is driving me mad.
Anyone else had any experience of this, or know anything?
Thanks in advance,
Cath

3 REPLIES 3

Anonymous
Not applicable

Generally, WiFi6 devices will perform the same or better than WiFi5 devices when connected to a WiFi5 router such as the THG3000.  

You do however get occasional specific compatibility issues, one of which exists in some Intel WiFi6 cards fitted in laptops, if you have one of these try using the Intel® Driver & Support Assistant 

There is also the unfortunate fact that some laptop WiFi is just plain abysmal and so even using a micro-USB WiFi adapter can improve performance.

caretaker
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

Out of interest did you resolve this problem?

In fact the Vodafone router appears to implement a proprietary WiFi 6 1024-QAM modulation enhancement to WiFi 5, so it's more an unofficial WiFi 5.5 spec router, capable of connecting at higher physical speeds than WiFi 5 caters for (up to 2.1Gbps reported on 5GHz).   I guess if this turned out to cause widespread interworking issues with official WiFi 6 clients then it would be a well known problem by now, but it's just possible that some specific WiFi 6 clients are selecting the non-standard 1024-QAM modulation and hitting compatibility problems. 

Are you able to test the WiFi 6 laptop with an official WiFi 6 router to eliminate problems with the laptop WiFi itself?

The 1024bit QAM on AC while not an agreed standard is actually pretty common and with client by client negotiation, it rarely causes any issues (it's probably in the Broadcom supplied BLOBs for their routers).

 

I don't use (or even possess a THG3000 router, but the common WiFi 6 issues often relate to poor Windows drivers for Intel AX WiFi cards.

 

Not fully related, but there are some devices that can be buggy when trying to use WPA3/WPA2-Personal authentication.  The one device on the network here the WPA bug hits is the Stada game controller!  It's possibly related to the storing WPA3 profiles, if for some reason a device then for some reason trys to connect to WPA2!