Killer 1535 does not see 5Ghz Wireless-N networks on some channels

Just got dell 9570 recently and its got killer 1535 wlan card on it. Connecting to AC networks it gives me consistent performance, great speed and stability. The experience has been great for me so far.

Until I tried to connect to 5Ghz N network (the AP is Unifi AP Pro), somehow my laptop only connect to the 2.4Ghz network. I configure to prefer 5Ghz on the laptop and the AP, but still connect to the 2.4Ghz network.

Tried to separate the SSID of the 5Ghz network, but my laptop does not see the new SSID (another laptop with intel 8620 can see and connect to the 5Ghz network just fine)

Then I changed the channel from 149 to 40, then the killer 1535 finally able to detect and connect to the 5Ghz network.

The odd thing is, the killer 1535 can see and connect to 5Ghz wireless-AC network just fine on channel 149-161, just not Wireless N network.

For home / office where I have control over my wireless network channels is not an issue, but what if I'm travelling and the AP only has wifi N and configured to channel 149-161?? 2.4Ghz is pain in the ass fo me, iperf test only gives me whopping 25mbps.

Anyone has similar issue as me? I'm thinking to replace the killer 1535 to intel 9260...

 

If its important enough to you then replace it with an Intel card, but if I were you i'd just live with it as long as it works at home. Just use 5GHz AC at home and 2.4GHz when you are travelling. 25mbps is nothing to scoff at, my home internet tops out at 6mbps so I would be very happy with those speeds.

 

The thing is I do travel a lot, and before this my old laptop was using 2.4Ghz wifi card only . However when I decided to upgrade it to intel 8260 I feel major improvement!. 5Ghz is so much better in terms of stability and speed. Both at home, at work and most public places.

I emailed killer support regarding this issue, if they dont have solution then I'll get intel 9260 because it's cheap enough to put my mind at ease when travelling.

 

Are you sitting in a corner far away? If so 5GHz is better in terms of speed and Killer drivers have improved a lot.
Do you mind running Killer's Uninstall tool and see updating to newest driver fixes your issue. You can go to device manager > Network adapters > Killer 1535 Properties and select Advanced tab to change roaming aggressiveness to Low.

 

I was giving up on killer 1535 and went with intel 9260 and it work great on my XPS 9750. It just works without any issue on the that machine.

However, out of curiosity I installed killer 1535 into my other laptop (Dell Latitude E5450) and see how it goes. It turns out I cannot install the latest version of the killer drivers because I use older windows 10 version, so I install the version Version: 1.5.1859.(it is a work laptop, so I cannot update the windows 10 installation)

It works fine detecting and connecting 5Ghz wireless N network on channel 149-161

On XPS 9570 I use version 1.7.1089 and it does not allow me to see 5Ghz Wireless N Network on ch 149-161

I guess its drivers issue then?

 

Which router? Make sure all cables and wires connected to router are properly in place otherwise Killer or qualcomm cards don't connect while Intel cards connect just fine but connection stability of intel is poor. Also update router firmware, use AES encryption key.

 

I used separate router (pfsense) and APs (unifi) (mix of unifi AP pro and Unifi AP AC) both in home and office. According to switch and controller its connected at 1000mbps and yes I'm always tend to like to update everything to the latest version. Unifi is not the fastest however it's the most stable wifi experience ever.

As the qualcomm vs intel wifi card, both are stable for me. The only issue I ever had with qualcomm cards was the not detecting wireless N 5Ghz network (which already resolved now).

However for now I'm sticking with intel 9260 on my XPS mainly because BT 5.0 (dont have 160Mhz AP) and keeping the killer 1535 on my backup laptop (then have intel 8260 spare wifi card haha)

 

N bands are restricted to 300Mbps or 600Mbps while 5GHz are A/AC.

 

All "a", "n" and "ac" are or can be available on 5GHz band. For "a" and "ac" it's compulsory whereas "n" cards can be 2.4Ghz only or 2.4/5 GHz.

 

But I have never see 'n' mode in 5GHz? Usually everyone denote a or ac being 5GHz.

Got a hold of 802.11 wiki page and it does state N being able to use 2.4/5GHz bands. Looks like my router doesn't do 802.11n at 5GHz.
Thanks for the info.

 

Very few wireless APs do support 5 GHz Wireless-N. I've never encountered one in the wild - I've only seen them in support tickets, and that is very rare. In fact, I thought that this was maybe the second such issue that I had seen this month, but then noticed that it's actually the same person, as he did submit a ticket.

As mentioned in my reply to the ticket, I'm still curious if this might be BIOS, OS, or machine specific. You can use our software uninstaller and then install the driver-only package to test the latest driver with the older version of Windows. You can do that by following the guide here - https://www.killernetworking.com/ki...how-do-i-get-rid-of-the-killer-control-center - though you don't need to "Disable Killer" as, since that machine didn't have the Killer adapter preinstalled, the manufacturer will not push the Killer Control Center through Windows Update. I'd be curious to see if the second computer also has the same issue with the latest driver.

 

Any reason why Killer website says KCC v2 is compatible with Killer 1535 and the UWP app from Store uses two versions v1.7 and v2.0 on 1535. I just checked WindowsApps folder.

 

The 1535 will not show the KCC v2 interface. The v2 interface is only available with the 1550 and the upcoming E3000. If you could provide me with a link to where it says otherwise on our website, I would be grateful as that definitely needs to be corrected.

The Killer Control Center effectively consists of two parts: the Killer Network Service, and the Killer Control Center. The former is what does the work, the latter is your interface to the service's settings. All of our currently supported adapters can make use of the latest improvements to the service, which is why you are seeing the v2 folder. However, the older adapters still require the older interface, which is why you are seeing the v1 folder and user interface.

 

Now its not there. When I first downloaded the new v2 drivers, it really did say Killer CC v2 for 1550,2500,1535 ....
Does bandwidth manager work for 1535? Why xTend service is installed on 1535?
Why on paper 1435 and 1535 look similar? I'm really confused.
Lastly, Killer 1535 driver update did improve the Wifi range and performance as in the changelog (for MiFi device).
Did you guys update 1535's network stack? It seems I get the same battery drain on 2.4G or 5GHz? Its just 10W drain or sometimes 5.6W!!! The power drain is similar to 2.4GHz.

 

The bandwidth management is the same with all currently supported adapters. At this time, the only difference is the user interface.
The 1435 and 1535 are very similar. The difference is that the 1535 has inline amplifiers for the 5 GHz radio, and the 1435 does not. This gives the 1535 better range on the 5 GHz band.
As far as I am aware, there were no changes to how much the power the 1535 should draw, but this will depend largely on the specific machine and the machine's BIOS, as that is what delegates power to the various devices.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

The newest V2 of the KCC is a bit off many times measuring bandwidth.

I have 200Mbps service and average about 240 Mbps running an independent speedtest.net

Setting bandwidth limits in the KCC v2.0.2332.0 I can get test results of over 1000 Mbps

I also often need to redo my setting after Windows 10 Cumulative/Version updates.

 

Try disabling startup item of Killer control center via task manager.
I think it is a bug its better to ping @Killer_Networking

 

I think I replied to this on another thread, but maybe not, as I can't seem to find it. Anyway, we are not receiving any other complaints about this, so it may just be the server that you are hitting from your specific geolocation is giving a false reading. We had been using Ookla's speed test API, but it has proven less than reliable of late, so we are experimenting with a few other services. For now, you can simply re-test, or use speed test results from a third party and manually type in the variables. If you are seeing this issue consistently from day to day, I would like to get a speed test log from you. In that case, can you please submit a ticket here - https://www.killernetworking.com/killersupport/contact?

Vasudev, thank you so much for the tag in!

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

I'm looking in Program Files>Killer Networking>Killer Control Center but I'm not finding a speedtest log

The only log is the KillerEventLogMessages.dll

The norm for my download speed is 240 Mbps connecting to a few servers in the Austin and Georgetown TX area.
Most of the time I connect to the University of Texas at Austin that's about 18 miles away or Sprint Austin.
I just ran the test again and it connected to the UT Austin server and got a normal 239.75 Mbps
I waited several minutes and ran the speed test again connecting to the same UT Austin server.This time I got a 642.38 Mbps result

host name speedtest.network.uttexas.edu Hosted by "University of Texas,Austin"
Location Austin Texas
Distance 18.1228 miles
Latency 0.064254 seconds

 

The log has to be generated manually using Command Prompt. Hence the ask for submitting a ticket, so as not to muddy the waters further with an off topic issue.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

I think the location has changed to Program files\Windows Apps

 

Thanks for interest in helping.

I beta test some Killer products and sometimes it's back to the drawing board.

I've been in contact with Killer Networking about this and other KCC v2 issues.

A new beta will be released within the next few days addressing the issue I described in this thread that is known to the engineers.

 

On your router, ensure that the 5Ghz channels are set to non-DFS values. When I’m back on the PC, I’ll post more details on that.

See this for more on the same: http://wifinigel.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-5ghz-problem-for-wi-fi-networks-dfs.html?m=1

Killer networks has a wiki entry for this, but I can’t track down that result for now.

http://support.killernetworking.com/knowledge-base/verizon-fios-5-ghz-issues/

Edit: Got it

 

A few updates on this topic:

On Channel selection:

If you want to use 5Ghz, non overlapping. non DFS channels at 40MHz, use the channels 36 , 44, 149, and 157.
On the Netgear R7000, I set the 5Ghz channel to 157.

For resources on WiFi AC planning, see http://www.revolutionwifi.net/revolutionwifi/2013/03/80211ac-channel-planning.html

The issue with wider channels (80 MHz) is their reliance on DFS channels for delivery.
Also see the warning on 80+80 (discontinuous) mappings that some routers out here push as 160MHz ready. They will NOT work with the 9260/9560: https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...0670/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

And that is by design.

If you plan to deploy wide channels (80Mhz+), plan ahead. There be dragons ahead.
For router firmware recommendations: Ditch the stock firmware UNLESS you need proprietary features that openwrt (or ddwrt) do not offer, such as CTF enablement on some Broadcom-based routers (now fixed in the likes of the R7000). Netgear's lackluster documentation on this front on networking options is a serious oversight.

References:

1. https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/hardware/soc/soc.broadcom.bcm47xx
2. QoS+CTF issues on fast internet connections: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Ni...-Through-Forwarding-feature-quot/td-p/1080686
3. Start on this excellent thread by @downloads http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/wi-fi-802-11ac-1-7-gbps-160mhz-channels-advisory.816318/

And remember: Always plan ahead. It will save you a lot of headaches later. Trivial issues often tend to be the biggest time consumers in troubleshooting down the line. And some, like picking the wrong router, can only be fixed by replacing it with a proper one.

 

One thing of note - most residential wireless networks have to work around interference from other Wi-Fi radios. The wider the channel, the more other nearby networks will interfere. Because of this, even if your router supports 80 MHz or 160 MHz channels, it's seldom faster as you're only expanding your footprint into the footprint of other Wi-Fi radios. Also, the wider the channel, the less powerful the signal, so you're introducing interference and increasing the signal diminishment from distance to the access point.

TL;DR, unless there are no other wireless radios in range, you're probably better off sticking to 40 MHz channel widths, even if your router and adapter can support bigger.

In doing support, the vast majority of silly arguments that I have with users is whether they are responsible for the settings of their router. Wi-Fi is still not as "plug and play" as people would like to believe. You really do need to learn how the settings work, and probably need to change some of them manually and, if you don't, you will have disconnects and slower Wi-Fi. That's still the nature of the beast.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

This should be put in every IT support desk's locker and notice board and on full display.
Deploying wireless networks in corporate environments makes you appreciate how many related components in the system can fail at any given time and yet somehow...it mostly works.