A curious bug: NETGEAR-Guest whether I want it or not!

[jeburnett2022]

That's interesting because the problems I'm having are so far only on Windows 10 PCs, however some of what you say isn't true in my particular case, at least in regard to WPA3, which IS working fine.  I'm not using legacy drivers but instead the very latest Intel drivers for the Wi-Fi card.

[FURRYe38]

Ok, early on WPA3 wasn't supported. MS may have fixed that. Not sure what the official support is regarding 6Ghz and Windows 10. Something you might check in to with MS about. Seems like though if your seeing problems across all Windows 10 platforms, this would be a key point to check into and the antenna support as well. 

I know on my one PC, dual boots Windows 10 and 11, my Intel AX210 6Ghz PCI adapter works on both, however I believe I had to use specific early version drivers to get Windows 10 working. 

[CrimpOn]

One clue might be to look at the properties of the WiFi adapter. On the Windows Control Panel, open Network and Sharing Center.

Click on Change Adaptor Settings.  Right click on the WiFi adapter. Select Configure, then the Advanced tab.

My Windows 10 laptop (with an 'ordinary 5G WiFi adapter') has entries for Wireless 'mode' and (farther down the list) for 'Preferred Band'.

If the WiFi adapter in the PC supports 6G WiFi, there should be some mention of 6G in the Advanced tab.

[jeburnett2022]

On both of my PC's not seeing the 6Ghz SSID, I have indeed set the preferred band to 6Ghz.  That did not make the 6Ghz SSID to become visible as an available network connection.

I'm holding out hope it's the antenna and I'll be testing that soon!

[jeburnett2022]

OK, I've been able to test if the new antenna was the solution and sadly it was NOT!

Which led me to do a lot more research through about 2 years of conflicting advice.

Does   Microsoft allow 6Ghz on Windows 10?    Apparently not any longer, but in the early days of 2021 they did.

From Intel's perspective, the drivers they publish work on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, but apparently Microsoft doesn't want 6Ghz to be used now and they've rigged Windows 10 to not allow (without any information messages either) it to connect or even see a 6Ghz SSID.  By the way, as best I could find, Microsoft has gone radio silent on this topic.

But there IS a way to get around their shenanigans!

Seems there were changes made to the Intel AX210 drivers after version 22.45.1.1, published Nov 28, 2021, that allow Microsoft to disable that feature.  But if you can install 22.45.1.1, you CAN see the 6Ghz SSID from Windows 10.

The information I used that led me to this solution and the old driver was at this link:  Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 can not connect to wifi 6E 6 GHz at WIN10 - Intel Communities

So, what I have now is a 6Ghz only connection to the Orbi and Windows 10 is reporting a 2.4Gbps connection, which is double what I had when connected to the 5Ghz link prior to this change.

The only damper on all of this is, it really didn't help.  Running Speed test on the 5G I was able to get about 500Mbps even though my ISP is providing a bit more than 1400Mbps.  When I joined the 6Ghz band, despite the rate Windows reported is double, the Speed test is only approaching the mid to upper 300 Mbps.

So, after all of this, I'll probably revert back to 5G, but I'll leave it this way for a few days to see if there any changes.

With regards to the older Intel driver, there are some bugs/limitations that inhibit some status info that Windows presents (like channel numbers) and it's even possible that the poorer performance under 6Ghz is actually due to driver defects from way back when.  Intel's current driver version is 22.190.0.4 and this version running under Windows 11 has no issue seeing the 6Ghz SSID.

Hope this helps others!

[FURRYe38]

Ya I believe thats the drive that I have loaded on my Window 10 PC with the 6Ghz adapter. I haven't tried speed testing in a while. I'll check this out again. 

Ya MS is great for sheanegans for sure and going slight. Shame they don't allow it on 10. But there pushing Windows 11 now. And that's more shenaegans as well with there limitations on PC HW support. I had to mod the install on one of my PCs to make it work on a well capable PC. 

So there we have it. 🙄