Just trying to make things work better and I know a lot of you folks on here have dealt with this... I know I've got a lot of questions but better to ask a pro than try to sort through Page after page.... 2 questions. Interesting question about my current set up, I have a Intel ac9260 wifi card in my notebook that is used with my Netgear Nighthawk R7500 v1 listed above... I have my router set at channel (?) 161 thinking for some reason... .the card is a 200mhz card I guess in all my reading I just happen to pick that... Im getting around 300mbps down on 5g wireless.. is there a different I should change my router for faster speeds? Today I ordered a Intel AX210 card to replace the 9260 card is there any downside to that .. I am trying to decided on getting a new router (probably a Wifi 6 Nighthawk .... Should I just wait to install the new card until I get the router? One last comment for kicks I set up a trendnet 1900 ac just to test things... with that router... I was getting over 500mbps, almost as if my notebook was hooked directly up to Ethernet... Strange and I can't explain what is going on with that. Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.

Piemans, Thanks so much for your input... I've been testing a few MTU speeds on the 5G band and I put in 1468 this morning and am seeing a speed of Almost 450 down and I think it will go higher once everything settles in... Amazing what a few tweaks can do. Spectrum only has 20mbps up and I am passing that. I'm sitting about 20' from the router. When I run my ethernet cable I am at almost 560mbps down... rock solid. I have been doing a lot of testing lately because I am waiting to find out if I can get fiber to our house...united communications is starting to hang fiber (we live in the country) and have only had Spectrum up to now and I have the 500mbps service. In anticipaton of getting 1GB fiber I have been looking at new Wifi 6 router set ups ( I have read many tech reports on the Mesh type set ups but I think I'll pass... we have Cat 5 running to all the rooms and I have 99% of our devices connected to Ethernet and we actually only have a handful of Wifi connections. Saying that... in 2005 when we built this house all cable installed was Cat 5 and not Cat 5e so the down fall is that I am seeing a limit on the device to device transfers to items like my NAS units that are hardwired. I know folks say I need to change the cable... No way, it's a 5,000 sq ft house and all cables are already run and I am not about to try to change them at this point... The one area we seem to spend most of our time and use the wifi happens to be about 20' from the router so I am thinking if I get a Wifi 6 router I can at least run Cat 6e to the new router from the fiber and get the use of the wifi locally. The Intel card should be here today and I'll try to change it out this weekend... but the limit will be the current router... it seems that Netgear never offered a 4x4 client to take advantage of the 4x4 router design... and with that I'm capped at 1730 at this point. I am thinking by going at least Wifi 6 I will get a bit more speed on my Wi-Fi

Your right on the cards, I knew it was Intel and if Netgear every offered something it probably would have been with Intel chips... We have kind of a crazy set up.... actually all the rooms upstairs are hard wired and we are not up there often enough to worry... our router is so locally positioned in the middle of the house we get acceptable levels for the little wifi use we need. We have a recording studio that is the whole floor above our dethatched garage...right now I just had a cat 5 cable installed and put a Wifi AP out there for folks that come in and to connect to our HVAC controller ... I'll keep a look out on the Orbi systems but like I said it may be more than we need (it's just my wife and I) all or media run on hard cable connections. With just the 2 of us, we are probably way over kill anyway... We have the Fiber company offered us 1 gig up and 1gig down for 49.00 per month for 3 years .. .my 500mbps spectrum cable is now 80 per month going to $100 in august so, hopefully we can get the fiber in before any price increases... As for use... with the studio from time to time I have some HUGE files to transfers to other studios from time to time and with a limit on 20mbps upload it is a hassle, with fiber it will no doubt make that chore a lot quicker to complete. I see you have the Nighthawk RAXE500, that was one of the routers I am looking at... I probably would not need the E, but just a Wifi 6 but then again having the 6E may be interesting to experiment with. The Intel AX210 is compatible with 6E correct... it would give me some options. I'm usually not a new adopter as you can see... so, Wifi 7 isn't something I'd jump in to at this point.

After I had written my last note I started thinking... .Ok well put the ax210 card in and even upgrade the router, Like you mentioned I'd probably get a pretty good bump from 1730 of my current to 2400 on a new 5g band... and your right as I upgrade our equipment and devices that handle the Wifi 6 (or even 6e) I'd be set. I wish I'd get an install date for fiber so far all they say is "It's coming" but they seem to look at the interest and then install the lines ... so its a wait and see! I did notice that United router they offer with satellites are only WiFi 6, they would install the router and a couple of satellites for about $15 -20 a month but I can get a mesh system that is Wifi 6 fairly inexpensively and not worry about 6e at this point.. So many choices and unknowns. I should get my additional 16gb of ram in a few days and they I may just go ahead and install the wifi card and us it on my wifi 5 set up ... can't hurt! All in all, I am guessing any of my hard wired devices will handle the 1GB just fine and that's 95% of our devices today.

Good Evening I thought I'd bring you up to date on my system decisions. I had a long talk with Intel and they were really nice and provided me with everything I needed to install an AX200 card in my Dell Laptop... I replaced the Intel AC 9260 (those small antenna connections sure are tricky but I finally got them installed... turned on my Laptop and my notebook found the drivers and updated both my bluetooth and wifi .and I'm glad I did. Using my R7500 router I use to probably average 250 to maybe 300mbps ... the first test with the AX200 came in at about 426 and then increased to 487.. .I've seen some tests over 500 . (these speeds are with my current Netgear router. I can see the link speed has increased and I'm a happy person right now... After doing a load of reading and looking at an AX6 router I finally pushed the buy button on a Asus AX88U ... and I feel that this will be a good choice for me... . Netgear is a big company and offering 90 day support is shameful their recent marketing changes of charging for services that use to be free kind of irks me... I even noticed that my current router that us to give me some parental control (which I never need) they now are making me pay a subscription. Crazy! I will be hooking up the now router hopefully this week and I am going to upgrade to Spectrum 1gb down (35 up) perhaps this week.. it's a no brainer they want to change out my modem ... Long story short I've not got any info on when United Communications will get to our area so.. I'll try Spectrum if I'm not happy... Ill change... but the biggest plus is I do not have to do any installation changes where I will have to with United. Spectrum has offered me a 3 year promo which is about half of what I pay now and they are also talking to me about Spectrum Mobile but my biggest concern there is do they really have the coverage that I have with Verizon! Anyway just thought I'd send you a note and update you were I am with my research

The new card is doing great and talking to the router with wifi6 I am linked at 2.4ghz and getting some fantastic speeds.... I really like the Asus so far my big mistake was not changing the router IP address to 192.168,1,1 the Asus is 192.168.50.1 and that screwed up my plex and Nas systems so I have to go back and do quite a few redirects.... but at least I'm getting through it and I am sure it will all work out in the long run, just a bit of a pain... Other than that it seems stronger wifi signals, my wifes phone shows Wifi 6 (mine isn't but not worth buying a new phone) I really got irritated when I read that Netgear went back and changed some of the features of the older routers even my R7500 then 90 tech support and 1 year warranty... just kind of soured my taste for them... My router was $250 which was in line with some of the Netgear I was looking at... but I have to tell you the Asus web GUI is fantastic..... Anyway we will see how it all works out...

Netgear Nighthawk 2350 v1 router set up question with intel AC9260

14 Replies

plemans
Guru - Experienced User
Feb 24, 2023
That router's 5ghz is a 4x4 antenna that supports "up to 1733mpbs". so 433mpbs over each antenna. That intel card is a 2x2 antenna device. So its max connection link is 866mpbs. Actual throughput (your actual speed) tends to be 55-65% of link speed. So you should be able to get 500mbps ish out of it. Try changing what channel you're on. Also make sure to test at close range as 5ghz speeds drop of quickly with distance/obstruction.

I would stick the AX210 card in the laptop. It won't hurt anything to have it installed.
- davidk1952
  Luminary
  Feb 24, 2023
  Piemans, Thanks so much for your input... I've been testing a few MTU speeds on the 5G band and I put in 1468 this morning and am seeing a speed of Almost 450 down and I think it will go higher once everything settles in... Amazing what a few tweaks can do. Spectrum only has 20mbps up and I am passing that. I'm sitting about 20' from the router.
  
  When I run my ethernet cable I am at almost 560mbps down... rock solid.
  
  I have been doing a lot of testing lately because I am waiting to find out if I can get fiber to our house...united communications is starting to hang fiber (we live in the country) and have only had Spectrum up to now and I have the 500mbps service.
  
  In anticipaton of getting 1GB fiber I have been looking at new Wifi 6 router set ups ( I have read many tech reports on the Mesh type set ups but I think I'll pass... we have Cat 5 running to all the rooms and I have 99% of our devices connected to Ethernet and we actually only have a handful of Wifi connections. Saying that... in 2005 when we built this house all cable installed was Cat 5 and not Cat 5e so the down fall is that I am seeing a limit on the device to device transfers to items like my NAS units that are hardwired. I know folks say I need to change the cable... No way, it's a 5,000 sq ft house and all cables are already run and I am not about to try to change them at this point... The one area we seem to spend most of our time and use the wifi happens to be about 20' from the router so I am thinking if I get a Wifi 6 router I can at least run Cat 6e to the new router from the fiber and get the use of the wifi locally.
  
  The Intel card should be here today and I'll try to change it out this weekend... but the limit will be the current router... it seems that Netgear never offered a 4x4 client to take advantage of the 4x4 router design... and with that I'm capped at 1730 at this point. I am thinking by going at least Wifi 6 I will get a bit more speed on my Wi-Fi
  - plemans
    Guru - Experienced User
    Feb 24, 2023
    Netgear doesn't make the wifi cards/chipset. Those tend to be intel/qualcomm etc. There were a few 4x4 cards made but there were pretty expensive. The 2x2 devices do fine.
    
    Its nice to shoot for faster speeds but its something to keep in mind the cost/benefit ration. Most streaming services only need 25-40mbps to stream 4k. So the vast majority of people don't really see much speed difference once you're above that 300+mbps unless you truly have a ton of streamers in the home. The only reason I have gigabit speeds is for testing routers and my media server. Or I'd be dropping my down.
    
    Just something to keep in mind since you're hitting pretty decent speeds.
    
    I would watch for mesh systems when you do upgrade based off the size of your home. I didn't think it'd make a difference in my home (3.2K ft) but it did. Much better coverage at the peripheral. And your home is even bigger than mine. It doesn't have the same peak performance of flagship routers when you're close to the router but at the edges, its much faster and more stable.
    
    It might be worth holding off a little on purchase if your current device is working well as we're starting to see talk of wifi 7 routers. Not saying to buy one but when they start being released, you tend to see the wifi 6 stuff marked down a bit. Might get a 8 or 9 series orbi for pretty reasonable

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Netgear Nighthawk 2350 v1 router set up question with intel AC9260