Windows 10: USB WiFI adapter seems to be bandwidth limited? Weird

Recently my download speed has diminished seriously. It used to be very high and now it is 4 MBps according to several Speedtest sites.

I have 4 computers in our home: wife's, TV room, my desktop and my laptop.

We have ATT Internet with 24 MBps download speed.

Two of these computers (my desktop and laptop) download at 4 MBps and the other two download at 29 MBps.

By swapping the Wifi adapters, the speed reduction follows the USB adapter.

I was not able to figure out why this just happened. I know I got very high speeds in the past, but lately things seemed to slow down.

I tried as many debugging steps as I could even full uninstalls and re-installs, but I could not get past about 4 or 5 MBps download.

I bought a new WiFi adapter for the desktop and the problem went away, but the laptop has a built-in Wifi on the motherboard. I guess I could still install a second one externally if I need it.

It is mysterious how two different WiFi adapters on two different computers will suddenly misbehave like this.

The WiFi that mis-performed was a Netgear WNA1100. I replaced it with an ASUS AC-56 - a nice dual-band USB 3 adapter.

The Wifi in the laptop is a Qualcomm Atheros AR956x device.

The device drivers were up-to-date and all our computers are at the same current version of Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (15063.413)

:)

 

I installed Windows 10 Update today with disastrous results

The modem connects to the router with an Ethernet cable. The router's operating system is based on Linux. If you think your WiFi adapter is not passing on the full bandwidth it receives from the router, it seems to me you should be complaining to the manufacturer
of your WiFi adapter.

P.S. The latest Windows 10 driver for your WiFi adapter - 19.50.1 dated March 30, 2017 - is easily found

on the Intel website.

 

Windows 10: Wireless Intermittently Disconnecting

After upgrading to Windows 10 from Windows 7 I have been encountering a problem with my wireless adapter when my Wifi is set at the 5GHz bandwidth (where I had no issues at all with Win 7). At this bandwidth my wireless intermittently disconnects.

There appears no pattern to it as sometimes it disconnects and reconnects loads, does it randomly once or doesn't do it for ages. It automatically reconnects after disconnecting and when moving back down to the 2.4GHz bandwidth I don't appear to encounter
this (not been used long enough to definitely say though!) and just get a worth wifi connection due to the busier bandwidth.

"Solutions" I have tried so far with no success include:

(1) Maximum Performance on Wireless adapters: to prevent it being powered-down.#

(2) Changing the driver from Ralink to MediaTek: where the latter makes the 5GHz bandwidth not detectable.

(3) Changing USB port

(4) Making it a private network (which it is but it was previously public)

(5) Unticking IPv6

(7) Unticking "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"

At an educated guess it seems to me that there is some sort of driver issue with the 5GHz bandwidth with Windows 10 but I have not been able to spot a driver update for Windows 10 for my adapter or an alternative. Here is the wireless adapter i am currently
using:

CSL - DUAL BAND N600 WLAN Stick:Amazon.co.uk:Electronics

Driver: Ralink, Version: 5.1.7.0

Cheers for any help in advance!

Chris

 

the speed of the adapter is limited by the speed of usb 2.0.

 

This is not the issue. I had previously experienced much higher than 5 MBps on the older adapter. All of the other adapters that get 29 MBPs are on USB 2 ports.

 

Based upon the model numbers it would appear the Netgear is 802.11b/g/n while the ASUS is the newer 802.11ac. To get the best performance the Router also needs to be AC compatible, I have recently acquired 2 computers with the AC adapter and next purchase will need to be an AC Router.

 

My ATT-supplied router is B/G/N with a 40 MHz bandwidth.

But I will repeat, I had much higher bandwidth in the recent past. But not after something happened, like, maybe, the Creator Update of Windows changed something.

I have had no hardware changes in many months.