I've looked through the forums already and I'm not sure what to do at this point. I've had the A7000 for a couple years now. We moved back home and just had them swap out internet router box due to slow speeds. This was affecting the entire house. It was all fixed and I was pulling down 300 regularly without an issue. Now I've recently starting dropping to 20. Last time I just moved the USB to another port and it fixed itself. Today it started again. I went to my laptop and it was downloading at 330. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the software and windows auto tuning is normal. I did try disabling it and it didn't affect anything After reinstalling the software for the adapter it feels like I'm capped at around 100, and it won't go higher. I'm not sure what to do, I don't want to go buy another adapter since that might not solve the issue either.
Model: A7000|Nighthawk AC1900 WiFi USB Adapter - USB 3.0
It's an all in one router/cable box from Altice. It's got what they call the smart wifi merging both 2.4 and 5Ghz into one. When I look at my Netgear genie I am connected to the 5Ghz band same with when I look at the router. It will tell you 2.4 or 5Ghz. The netgear genie says 289Mbps. Which is almost what I can get. My laptop is connected same way and is pulling 330Mbps. I had problem with my TP Link I was using, but Altice keeps saying how I can't hook that up.
It's an all in one router/cable box from Altice. It's got what they call the smart wifi merging both 2.4 and 5Ghz into one. When I look at my Netgear genie I am connected to the 5Ghz band same with when I look at the router. It will tell you 2.4 or 5Ghz. The netgear genie says 289Mbps. Which is almost what I can get. My laptop is connected same way and is pulling 330Mbps. I had problem with my TP Link I was using, but Altice keeps saying how I can't hook that up.
So routers that use band steering (single ssid/name) will move devices between 2.4ghz and 5ghz. Like I said 5ghz is significantly faster than 2.4ghz. Your low speeds aren't abnormal for 2.4ghz.
If your laptop isn't using much bandwidth and a different device is, it might drop the laptop down to 2.4ghz and the other device to 5ghz. many of them have a complex setup of how they determine which band to be on. It can be based on bandwidth needs, signal strength, wireless interference, etc.
If you don't want it this way, you need to disable the single ssid function and then you can choose which band to connect to.
I'm not sure what tp-link device you're using as tp-link makes many different types/models of devices.
Can you check your USB power settings for your device? Also check system power settings for USB devices under where you can conrol power (power saving, high performance, balanced).
Also check the USB hub settings for your computer under system devices and see if there is a power management mode for those. I'm trying to figure out whats going on with an A7000 adapter and so far, the two things that seem to be working, is to use one of the earlier drivers, and then also disable any powersaving measures for the USB devices itself (the wifi adapter) and the USB hub settings/including powersaving modes for USB devices.
It's just a hunch - but I suspect - Windows 10 is doing something weird with these devices or there is some configuration issue on my desktop.
I know this is supposed to be a public facing forum but the lack of input from actual netgear employees with any technical/support/engineering background on this forum is just a shame. Its embarassing.
