WiFi – Wireless Adapter Settings
It’s safe to say that we live in a world where every laptop has one and the number of desktop motherboards with them is increasing. WiFi adapters. But with the many WiFi standards the past years and the variety of WLAN Access Points you might need to change a setting to get a good WiFi connection. Here’s what the settings mean:
Use 802.11n channel width to set high throughput mode channel width in order to maximize performance.
- Auto (default): For band 5.2, this setting uses 20 or 40 MHz depending on the wireless access point or router
- 20 MHz
The 802.11n standard adds multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). MIMO increases data throughput to improve the transfer rate. Use the setting to enable or disable high throughput mode support (MIMO – 802.11n).
Ad–hoc channel 802.11 b/g
Ad-hoc channel 802.11 b/g is the band and channel selection for device to device (ad-hoc) networks. You don’t need to change the channel unless the other computers in the ad-hoc network are not using the default channel.
If you must change the channel, select the allowed operating channel:
- 802.11b/g (Default): Select when using 802.11b and 802.11g (2.4 GHz) ad-hoc band frequency.
- 802.11a: Select when using 802.11a (5 GHz) ad-hoc band frequency.
Ad-hoc power management
Set power-saving features for device to device (ad-hoc) networks.
- Disabled: Select when connecting to ad-hoc networks with stations that don’t support ad-hoc power management.
- Maximum Power Savings: Select to optimize battery life.
- Noisy Environment: Select when connecting in a noisy environment to prevent performance degradation.
Ad-hoc QoS mode
The Quality of Service (QoS) control in ad-hoc networks prioritizes traffic from the access point over a Wi-Fi Local Area Network (LAN) based on traffic classification. WMM* (Wi-Fi Multimedia*) is the QoS certification of te Wi-Fi Alliance* (WFA). When WMM is enabled, the adapter uses WMM to support priority tagging and queuing capabilities for Wi-Fi networks.
Bluetooth® AMP
Enable or disable Bluetooth® AMP.
AMP stands for Alternate MAC/PHY and uses the 802.11(Wi-Fi) as the high-speed transport. If disabled, Bluetooth HS is turned off.
Fat channel intolerant
The setting communicates to surrounding networks that the Wi-Fi adapter is not tolerant of 40 MHz channels in the 2.4 GHz band. The setting’s default is disabled (turned off) so that the adapter does not send this notification.
Mixed mode protection
Use mixed mode protection to avoid data collisions in a mixed 802.11b and 802.11g environment. Use Request to Send/Clear to Send (RTS/CTS) in an environment where clients may not hear each other. Use CTS-to-self to gain more throughput in an environment where clients are within hearing proximity.
| Note | The setting is not valid when 802.11n mode is enabled. |
Roaming aggressiveness
Define how aggressively your Wi-Fi client roams to improve connection to an access point. Click Use default value to balance between not roaming and performance.
- Lowest: Your wireless client won’t roam. Only significant link quality degradation causes it to roam to another access point.
- Medium-Low/Medium-High: Allow roaming.
- Medium: Balanced setting between not roaming and performance.
- Highest: Your Wi-Fi client continuously tracks the link quality. If any degradation occurs, it tries to find and roam to a better access point.
Throughput Enhancement/Booster
Enhance the transmit throughput by enabling packet bursting. The default setting is Disable.
Transmit power
The optimal setting is to set the transmit power at the lowest possible level still compatible with communication quality. The setting allows the maximum number of wireless devices to operate in dense areas. It reduces interference with other devices that share the radio spectrum. If you decrease the transmit power, you reduce the radio coverage.
- Lowest: Sets the adapter to the lowest transmit power. Increase the number of coverage areas or confine a coverage area. You should reduce the coverage area in high traffic areas to improve overall transmission quality and avoid congestion or interference with other devices.
- Medium-low/Medium/Medium-high: Set by country requirements.
- Highest (Default): Sets the adapter to a maximum transmit power level. Use this setting for maximum performance and range in environments with limited radio devices.
Wake on magic packet
If enabled, the setting wakes the computer from a sleep state when it receives a “magic packet” from a sending computer. The magic packet contains the MAC address of the intended destination computer. Enabling turns on Wake on Magic Packet. Disabling turns off Wake on Magic Packet. It only disables the magic packet feature, not Wake on Wireless LAN
Wake on pattern match
The feature wakes the computer from a sleep state when an adapter receives a particular wake pattern. Window 7* and Windows 8* support the feature. Patterns are typically:
- Wake on new incoming TCP connection for IPv4 and IPv6 (TCP SYN IPv4 and TCP SYN IPv6)
- Wake on 802.1x reauthentication packets.
Disabling only disables the pattern match feature, not Wake on Wireless LAN.
Wireless mode
The setting allows you to select whether the adapter operates in the 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11a bands.
- 802.11b only: Connect the wireless adapter to 802.11b networks only.
- 802.11g only: Connect the wireless adapter to 802.11g networks only.
- 802.11a and 802.11g: Connect the wireless adapter to 802.11a and 802.11g networks only.
- 802.11b and 802.11g: Connect the wireless adapter to 802.11b and 802.11g networks only.
- 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g (Default): Connect to 802.11a, 802.11b, or 802.1g wireless networks.
NS offloading for WOWLAN
NS offload is the ability of the network adapter to respond to a Neighbor Discovery Neighbor Solicitation request with a Neighbor Advertisement without waking the computer. Both the hardware and the driver must support NS offload to enable this feature.
Packet Coalescing
The feature enables power saving by reducing the number of receive interrupts. The feature reduces receive interrupts by coalescing random broadcast or multicast packets.
ARP offloading for WOWLAN
ARP offload is the network adapter’s ability to respond to an IPv4 ARP request without waking the computer. To enable the feature, both the hardware and the driver must support ARP offload.
GTK rekeying for WOWLAN
Group Temporal Key (GTK) Rekey is used to encrypt and decrypt network traffic.
The setting lets you select HT Mode (High Throughput mode), select VHT Mode (Very High Throughput Mode), or disable both modes.
- Disabled
- HT mode (supports 802.11n compatibility)
- VHT mode (supports 802.11ac compatibility)
Sleep on WOWLAN disconnect
Sleep on WOWLAN Disconnect is the ability to put the device to sleep/drop connection when WOWLAN is disconnected.
U-APSD support
uAPSD (or WMM-Power Save or WMM-PS) is a WiFi capability that saves power consumption on low periodic latency-sensitive traffic modes, like a VOIP. We have identified IOT (interoperability) issues with certain access points that result in reduced Rx throughput.
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Everything about different WiFi modes of operation
Wireless adapters, or network interface controllers (NICs for short), are network cards with the 802.11 standards that let a machine connect to a wireless network. A station is any device that has such a card. Access points, also known as AP or hotspots, can let nearby WiFi-equipped stations access a wired network to which the access point is directly connected. The 802.11 standard defines two operating modes: infrastructure mode and ad hoc mode.
Wireless network in infrastructure mode
In infrastructure mode, each station computer (STA for short) connects to an access point via a wireless link. The set-up formed by the access point and the stations located within its coverage area is called the basic service set (BSS). They form one cell. Each BSS is identified by a BSSID, a 6-byte (48-bite) identifier. In infrastructure mode, the BSSID corresponds to the access point’s MAC address:
It is possible to link several access points together (or, more precisely, several BSS’s) using a connection called a distribution system (DS) in order to form an extended service set or ESS. The distribution system can also be a wired network, a cable between two access points, or even a wireless network:
An ESS is identified with an ESSID, Extended Service Set Identifier. But what is ESSID? It is a 32-character identifier (in ASCII format) that acts as its name on the network. The ESSID, often shortened to SSID, shows the network’s name and, in a way, acts like a first-level security measure because it is necessary for a station to know the SSID to connect to the extended network.
When a roaming user goes from one BSS to another while moving within the ESS, their machine’s wireless network adapter can switch access points depending on the quality of the signal it receives from different access points. Access points communicate using a distribution system to trade information about the stations and, if necessary, transmit data from mobile stations. This feature that lets stations move «transparently» from one access point to another is called roaming.
Communicating with the access point
When a station joins a cell, the cell sends a probe request on each channel. This request contains the ESSID that the cell is configured to use and the traffic volume that its wireless adapter can support. If no ESSID is set, the station listens to the network for an SSID.
Each access point broadcasts at regular intervals (about ten times a second) a signal called a beacon, that gives information on its BSSID, its characteristics, and, if applicable, its ESSID. The ESSID is automatically broadcast by default, but it is possible (and recommended) to disable this option.
Whenever a probe request is received, the access point checks the ESSID and the traffic volume request found in the beacon. If the given ESSID matches the access point, the access point sends a response containing synchronization data and information on its traffic load. This way, the station that receives the response can check the quality of the signal being sent by the access point in order to determine how far away it is. Generally, the closer an access point is, the higher its data transfer capacity is.
So, a station within range of multiple access points (which have the same SSID) may choose the access point offering the best balance of capacity and current traffic load.
Ad Hoc mode
What is Ad Hoc mode? In this mode, wireless client machines connect to one another to form a peer-to-peer network, meaning a network in which every machine acts as both a client and an access point at the same time:
The set-up formed by the stations is called the independent basic service set, or IBSS for short. An IBSS is a wireless network that has at least two stations and uses no access point. Therefore, the IBSS, forms a temporary network that lets people in the same room exchange data. It is identified by an SSID, just like an ESS in infrastructure mode.
In an ad hoc network, the range of the independent BSS is determined by each station’s range. That means that if two stations on the network are outside each other’s range, they will not be able to communicate, even if they can «see» other stations. Unlike infrastructure, ad hoc mode has no distribution system that can send data frames from one station to another. An IBSS is, by definition, a restricted wireless network.