@AsankaG 

Bummer!

I'm now thinking of looking on Ebay for a whitelisted Qualcomm-Atheros NIC for my Lenovo.

And for a sale on another EAP225 

@unmesh

I had another go at this today at our 2nd site and the results are impressive. My downstream speeds for iPerf were around 650-670 Mbps and upstream 480-500Mbps upstream on my Galaxy S10. On my laptop I'm getting around 350 Mbps down and 280-300Mbps upstream.

This is a much better result compare to the first site and I now believe two things:

• My laptop has a poor WiFi card (AC8265)
• WiFi density matters - there's barely any 5G signals nearby and all the TP-Link APs farely spaced out.

All those tests were done about 5m away from the AP.

Hope this helps you.

Hi @unmesh,

That's great to hear.  I know the S10 has Wifi 6 (not that this really matters when connecting to a Wifi 5 AP) I haven't found if it is 2x2 or 3x3 yet (probably 2x2).

On your laptop, check the NIC.  It's possible one of the Antenna connectors popped off or became loose.  Try un-popping both an re-seating.  Also, it's possible the connector wire that runs form the main board up into your display is damaged.

Many (not all) laptops run the Wifi antennas through the joint up into the screen areas.

-Jonathan

@AsankaG 

Thanks for adding to the knowledge base

@JSchnee21 

I did some reading on the Lenovo forums and it looks like people are even more unhappy with the Qualcomm NICs than the Intel ones but it is worth popping the back off and looking at the antenna wires.

If I was confident about a NIC that was substantially better, I'd consider approaching a guy online who, for a small fee, will modify the whitelist in the BIOS to accept a device ID of your choosing. You need to send him an image of your BIOS to modify since they are now apparently all unique. There seems to be some doubt as to whether the reprogramming can be achieved entirely through software or whether one needs to buy a programmer with IC clip. The latter approach would probably not be worth the cost/effort/risk for me.

The educational journey continues 

I realize it sux to have something sticking out of your laptop, but these work well.  And they're not too big

TP-Link AC1300 (Archer T3U) $24.30 on Amazon. (2x2)

If you want 3x3 though they get much larger

Edimax EW-7833UAC AC1750 Dual-Band Wi-Fi USB 3.0 Adapter $42.90

@JSchnee21 

I looked up the Archer T3U and it is based on the Realtek RTL8812BU. Turns out I have a Comfast CF-812AC that uses the same chip but the transfer performance wasn't materially different from the Intel NIC.

I'm using the Realtek driver version 1030.38.328.2019 on Windows 10.

It could be that the TP-Link has better antennae though the size is the same as the Comfast.

Guys,

Finally bought an Intel AX200 wifi card, downgraded the BIOS on my Thinkpad T440S to a version that had not implemented a whitelist and can now reliably do file transfers at 70MBps down and 61MBps up!

I've ordered a flash programmer to see if I can upgrade the flash on my Yoga 720 daily driver to also accept an AX200.