USB Wi-Fi adapter suggestions
My (older, now) computer has started having issues with the WiFi cutting out.
I looked at the connection strength and saw it was sometimes dropping to 0, so I picked up a WiFi extender, and now it’s signal strength is usually around 70% (Windows only shows a percentage). However, even while monitoring the strength via a PowerShell script to watch the connection strength, it still drops out while the connection strength is > 70%. When it “drops out” I’ll run a speed test and see that it is basically uploading/downloading with kbps speeds instead of Mbps.
My other devices in the same room don’t seem to have any issues, so I’m wondering if my antenna or WiFi card (built in to the motherboard) are just failing.
I know PCIe WiFi cards are better, but unfortunately, as it’s an older computer (can’t even support Windows 11), the motherboard only has one PCIe slot that is in-use by the GPU.
So, any suggestions for a USB WiFi card that actually works? (Or additional ways of troubleshooting a failing wifi connection…)
As already pointed out, I would rule out the OS first. Also double check other things like overal temperatures, it is unlikely but if it is possibly that if the overal temperatures are not in order some chips sometimes just have trouble operating. As I said, unlikely, you would have noticed other slowdowns and behavior as well. Doesn't hurt to check though!
As far as relatively decent usb wifi sticks go, this netgear one supporting up to wifi 6E seems to be well liked overal. If you don't need wifi 6, your options get a lot cheaper to the point that you can almost just pick one from a somewhat reputable brand and see if it solves the issue for you.
One suggestion is to check and make sure it's not anything related to your operating system. If you can, put operating system on a bootable USB memory stick and see if you can replicate the behavior there. You can run this without disturbing your existing operating system - just look for "Live Boot" which means you don't have to install the OS to your hard drive to start using it immediately.
I know you said other devices don't seem to have a problem, but, just to rule it out, check the general wifi "airspace" around the room. You can use a wifi analysis app on your phone, such as https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.vrem.wifianalyzer/ . You keep the app open, then move your phone around the room, and [very] nearby the wifi antennae of the computer with the problem, and watch the strength of wifi on the app as you do so. You would also check the strength of other wifi access points (i.e. the wifi of your neighbours), which can interfere.
In my case, I had what I thought was a dead spot in one room, but it was actually most likely interference from a neighbour's wifi, which was overpowering mine. I got a wifi mesh network product, and that has solved it for me, probably by essentially "counter-overpowering" the neighbour's wifi. Not necessarily suggesting you get a mesh device (because that will probably be a more expensive solution than a single card or dongle for a single computer), but just some things to think about.
You might also find that there are physical objects getting in the way of a direct line between your access point and the problem computer. Moving some furniture around, or re-positioning the computer, or even just rotating it might help.
Oh it was definitely in a WiFi dead spot and that was certainly causing some issues. It’s in the farthest possible corner from our Router/AP, and I had noticed that it was having issues with signal strength.
So I got a WiFi extender but that didn’t fix the overall issue (but it did fix the signal strength issue), but it seem to make it less frequent…which I guess likely indicates the WiFi card is not the problem.
I should probably try WiFi channel hopping or swapping the GHz band in case it is interference…the problem is it’s infrequent enough to not reliably test the problem (and it usually shows up when I’m actively on a work call and can’t just drop everything to debug).
Powerline ethernet adapters could also be a decent option since we’re talking about a desktop and a router that both stay in the same places (and I’m assuming trailing a long network cable through the house isn’t a preferred fix!).
I’ve never found a WiFi extender that didn’t cause more problems than it solved. Not to say there are definitely no decent ones out there, just that I’ve come across a lot of bad ones and no good ones yet. Actual mesh WiFi is a whole different ball game, some of them are great, but I’m also assuming you don’t want to replace your existing WiFi setup with expensive mesh nodes. Ubiquiti’s LR (long range) series access points also absolutely do what they say on the tin, and you might well just get away with one of those replacing the router’s onboard WiFi, but again cost - and no guarantees it’ll work in your specific environment. I’d just go wired if it were me, even with the drawbacks of those wires being your existing power lines rather than proper network cables.
I'll second the idea of using powerline adaptors. I've had good luck with them in several cases where I wanted to get a device off WiFi and use a wired connection instead. Another option might be a MoCA adaptor, which uses the coax cable from cable TV/internet instead of power lines.
My wifi router wasn't quite getting along with the neighbors having their own powerful wireless signal. What made the issue worse was that my router was automatically choosing the best wireless channel which then, for some reason, had their router automatically choose a new channel which conflicted with my router which then chose a new channel and continued the channel switching mess. This likely was related to minor environmental differences... but still, channels kept switching which kept causing issues.
Once I used a Wifi analyzer app on my phone, I manually set what looked like the best channel at the time and just stayed there. That cleaned up a lot of issues (because their router was likely "automatically" realizing that my router wasn't moving from the channel it was sitting on and just kept their router on channels away from mine).
Try setting a router Wifi channel manually and see if that makes things better. If it doesn't then you can go back to automatic later.
Are you on the 2.4GHz band? Low strength 5GHz is often much better than full strength 2.4GHz in terms of throughput.
Low strength 2.4GHz + other nearby networks on the same band is a recipe for a bad time.
Note that 5GHz is much worse than 2.4GHz at penetrating walls (which contributes to improved interference: it's much harder for your neighbor's signal to make it out of their house and then into yours). It's worth testing, but if you haven't carefully designed your access point layout around it, it's likely to have more and much deeper dead zones than 2.4GHz.
(If you can't easily tell which band your radio is operating on, you can infer it from the WiFi channel: 2.4GHz is channels 1-14 while 5GHz is channels 32-177.)
If you've ever upgraded your OS on the computer, make sure the hardware drivers for the network card are actually compatible with Windows 10, 11, etc. I had an issue with system interrupts absolutely destroying my system performance for a while, and it turned out my network card didn't have Windows 10 drivers when I upgraded to 10 - it was just quietly wreaking havoc. Swapped the card out and it was fine. (If yours is integrated, grab a USB one - but good luck, my experience has been that they're all disposable...)