AX411 - $18.75

[Tech Junky]

Tag: AX411

mightygadget.co.uk

Picked up a couple of these to play with at 50% less than the Amazon listings for the same cards.

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Intel/AX411.NGWG.NV?qs=pBJMDPsKWf20x9LnYd7Bqw%3D%3D

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Intel/AX411.NGWG.NVX?qs=pBJMDPsKWf30aMbUoqH5Mg%3D%3D

https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-AX411NGW-802-11ax-Bluetooth-Compatible/dp/B09YQN5T2C

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Did you have a good experience with this vendor? And do they come with the antenna wires?

 

[Tech Junky]

@DAPUNISHER

It's on schedule to arrive today by UPS. I've never used them before since their site is a bit wonky but, they have a ton of items to pick through. I've used them before for finding niche items but, this is a first time order.

This is just the card and you'll need an ADL board / CPU to use it or later generation like RPL coming soon. The interface uses CNVIO2 so, no AMD.

For the antennas you just reuse what you have currently or order a pair of MHF4 antennas for ~$8 on Amazon.

 

[gibster]

I'd be interested in the outcome as well - I just purchased an AX210 for one of my x300 boxes - I understand that this chip is not that much of an improvement over the AX210 other than BT 5.3 and some more parallelization of traffic, but for the price, if it will work just as well as the AX210, what the heck...

 

[gibster]

@DAPUNISHER

It's on schedule to arrive today by UPS. I've never used them before since their site is a bit wonky but, they have a ton of items to pick through. I've used them before for finding niche items but, this is a first time order.

This is just the card and you'll need an ADL board / CPU to use it or later generation like RPL coming soon. The interface uses CNVIO2 so, no AMD.

For the antennas you just reuse what you have currently or order a pair of MHF4 antennas for ~$8 on Amazon.

Ah, no AMD, gotcha, so I shouldn't even try for my x300 boards

 

[Tech Junky]

Ah, no AMD, gotcha, so I shouldn't even try for my x300 boards

Intel CNVIO2 is the key here. It leaches off the CPU vs a standalone like the AX200/210 models.

The intrigue is that it simultaneously connects to both 2.4 & 5ghz at the same time which conceivably could boost my BW 1200+ ??? 300-600mbps

This might get me to ~2gbps on the LAN for transfers. If I still had my cable connection it would be interesting to see if they could bump the connection to 2gbps for speed testing on the WAN side but, I killed that off a couple of months ago for 5G for $50/mo no data caps.

 

[Tech Junky]

Bad week for shipping apparently as USPS and UPS both lost packages. Opened claims with both but, got Amazon to send a replacement for the item right away. UPS on the other hand had to wait out their BS delivery schedule to file a claim. Originally supposed to deliver Sat and then time updated to Tues which meant at least a 3 day delay. I let Mouser know there's an issue with the shipment as well but, haven't heard from them quite yet since it was after hours.

 

[Tech Junky]

So, UPS royally F'd up this delivery. Was supposed to show up Saturday and said it was out for delivery. Needless to say that came and went and then they said it was supposed to show up Yesterday and failed yet again. Turns out instead of putting it on the truck for Saturday they put it in a container and shipped it to San Diego instead. I opened cases / sent emails / etc. and finally got a response days later which just reenforces my hatred for UPS when it comes to deliveries. They botched an Amazon delivery a week or so ago as well and bumped it from Saturday to Monday for no reason as well so, I kind of expected them to mess this up as well.

Now, it's a bit of a fight to see if they'll put it on a plane and get it here tomorrow or Friday instead of the proposed Monday date the tracking system is showing now. Seems if it's not one thing with shipping and logistics it's another lately. I've been dinging Amazon on every delivery they've been missing and it's adding up to a year or Prime at this point and that's just in the past few weeks. Definitely not a Mouser problem here as they have no control over UPS and their antics but, it would be nice if they had other options besides UPS to choose from during checkout. Of course now that I go look at options... there's more options if you click a link on the summary page. DOH!



Even FedEX at the same price would've been better, but, USPS tends to be the best option heading into a weekend for delivery. Lesson learned to dig a bit deeper on shipping with Mouser in the future to opt for something not as disappointing as UPS/FX/

 

[Tech Junky]

So, Mouser got back to me this morning after a couple of days of sending them an e-mail letting them know there was a shipping issue with UPS. They sent me a 2nd set of AX411's complimentary and should show up tomorrow. Of course being UPS who knows what will actually happen at this point after sending the original batch to CA for a tour of the west coast for no apparent reason.







Now, this was totally unexpected on their part and they said to keep both orders when they eventually show up and not worry about making a return of either. Now, if Amazon took this approach I probably wouldn't raise hell with them weekly about missed deliveries or lost packages.

 

[Tech Junky]

Well, the 2nd order showed up on time as scheduled surprisingly.

The packaging is nice to see they aren't cheap like Amazon and just throwing things in a plastic bag and heat sealing it. They used a decent size box so it doesn't disappear into the mix with sorting which makes me question how UPS managed to F up the first delivery so badly and send it to CA. I half expected to have this show up in some odd sized packaging that would allow it to be diverted easily w/o noticing it around another package but, that's not the case here.

UPS is still dragging their ass though on the original shipment with a planned delivery for 8/16 making it two weeks for what should have shown up the next day like the reorder if they had not managed to do whatever they did with it to make it onto a container instead of the truck for delivery.

 

[Tech Junky]

Well, preliminary testing shows it to be the same as the AX210/211 so far. No better or worse though if you have an Intel system it's about 1/2 the price of the the full PCIE based options. It will take a few days to see if there's anything noticeable though as far as DCT or stability is concerned.

It did require setting the WIFI again on Windows for the profile / settings. Linux didn't blink an eye other than needing to update the WIFI IF ID in my various .conf files and the interfaces file.

 

[gibster]

Well, preliminary testing shows it to be the same as the AX210/211 so far. No better or worse though if you have an Intel system it's about 1/2 the price of the the full PCIE based options. It will take a few days to see if there's anything noticeable though as far as DCT or stability is concerned.

It did require setting the WIFI again on Windows for the profile / settings. Linux didn't blink an eye other than needing to update the WIFI IF ID in my various .conf files and the interfaces file.

I upgraded from 3168NGW to AX210NGW on a DeskMeet x300, seeing faster connection speeds and it seems a better/faster connection overall. Ordered a couple more for a DeskMini x300 and my laptop that has a Realtek ax card. Seems like a small price to pay for a pretty good upgrade, of course when WiFi 7 arrives it will be a little behind again, but it will probably take a good 2-3 years before that happens.

 

[Tech Junky]

@gibster

The AX210 is a great option for older systems prior to ADL / 600 series boards and even for current ADL/600 systems. There's less compatibility issues since it's a full card w/o CNVIOx factoring into the slotting and loading of the card. I've found a lot of OEM cards though are crap 1x1 or just really bad 2x2 setups for some reason. I mean sure you get basic connectivity out of the box @ 433mbps but, WTH is the point of buying a new machine just to have a crappy WIFI card in it? There also seems to be a couple of versions of AX as one tops out at 1200mbps and the current one hits 2400mbps for a link rate. Reminds me of AC when it came out sort of like a draft / official / wave 2 situation.

$30 on acg for an AX210 is a worthwhile venture for most seeing sub gigabit speeds on the LAN.

WIFI 7 is something I'm looking forward to with those 320mhz channels doubling the speed to ~2gbps on the low end and ~3gbps on the high end for a single client.

What would be really nice is if some OEM would put out a M2 4x4 card to double both of those numbers. The only 4x4 options right now won't work in most current laptops since they're mPCIE and would need an adapter. There are some adapters you could scavenge a M2 M-Key slot with but, that takes away storage options if you're running dual NVME drives.

WIFI marketplace is a jumbled cluster F with AX/E options most of which are just using the AX210 and relabeling it with their logo. But, if you go into the DM and look at the driver you see it's the Intel card you just paid double for.

 

[Tech Junky]

Just noticed that I didn't have 2.4 enabled on my primary SSID and then when I added it to the profile it kicked me and said I had a bad PW for some reason and ended up rebooting the AP as I didn't feel like figuring out the issue. Now that the SSID profile spans both frequencies DCT should kick in and enable more BW.

 

[Tech Junky]

Ok... so there's a significant improvement in speeds. UL to my server hit 178MB/s where as it usually hovers at ~125MB/s. DL from the server though seems to be a bit slower at ~80MB/s.

Just noticed it's saying it's connected to 802.11g instead of ax..... maybe some tweaking of the details will bump it even further.

 

[Tech Junky]

Yup, adjusted the preferred bands to include a/b/g from a/g and it popped up to 1.2gbps / DL from the server.

 

[Tech Junky]

I tried to capture some more info on how DCT works but, the 2nd band when in use isn't providing much info.

 

[gibster]

I tried to capture some more info on how DCT works but, the 2nd band when in use isn't providing much info.

I'm not getting anywhere near your speeds on the AX210... Best I've seen is around 700+Mbps, but I'm also further away from my router, my signal quality hovers around 40 (from iwconfig). My router is TPLink AX4400. I'm actually happy with the speeds I'm getting, for higher speeds I should probably be closer to the router. Wondering about the antenna configuration on the router as well - I don't have all of them (6) pointing up, I left some at a slight angle nfrom vertical, not sure what the best strategy is for the antennas...

 

[Tech Junky]

@gibster

I'm using an actual AP not a router so, it's a bit more robust in signal. The AP I'm using is NWA210AX and it's a 4x4:4 antenna setup inside the casing.

As to antenna positioning it makes a difference in 45/90/180 degree positions. I have ripped apart my 5G gateway and put some external antennas to use on it in + pattern up/down/r/l and this picks up a better signal for the 5G cellular connection. I've been playing with different orientations in it for a couple of months though and different DB levels to pinpoint the best option. The problem is I have the cell site on the side of the building and it's too close to get the best signal / bandwidth. If I take it outside and about 50 feet from the building the speed triples to 600/100.

I tried everything from 3-8DB antennas to directional panels at 7DB and nothing really made much of a difference. The panels though did seem to be the most stable but, @ $9/antenna and hard to position consistently due to size they went back. I converted the antenna connectors from SMA to RP-SMA though to drop the low band 71 channel from being picked up as it's much slower than 41. Sometimes an ultra wideband antenna isn't the best option when it comes to certain things.

So, with the AX210 I was breaching the 1gbps speed just fine with the AP which is connected through 2.5GE Ethernet. The new DCT with the AX411 though combining bands into a single connection boosts things to a consistent 1.5gbps though which is beyond the typical speeds I was getting with the AX210. I've been playing around with channel settings though today on the AP to see if there's any more speed I can get out of a single 2x2 client but, it looks to be topped out at this point.

I went and dug into some of the RF specs / speeds of AX and the typical calculation of wifi is 70% of the link rate when you remove the overhead from the top speed. So, if I'm connecting at 2.4gbps I should theoretically be able to get it running at 1.7gbps which is pretty close to the 1.5gbps I'm seeing. The extra 200mbps isn't going to make much of a difference.

Some things to check on your setup though would be downloading a wifi analyzer app for your phone to see what's around you that can cause it to run slower. Picking a static channel rather than the automagic selection is usually a better idea and it will force AP's around you to move away from that channel over time. Once you nail down the channel you need a router/AP that will do 160mhz which will double the speed of the client using the AX210.

AX4400 Dual-Band Gigabit Wi-Fi 6 Router

Enjoy Wi-Fi 6 connectivity for every device with the Archer AX4400 tri-band Wi-Fi 6 router.

www.tp-link.com

Looking at this your device is capable of HE160 which means it should do just fine for 160mhz channel width. Your bottleneck though will be the fact it doesn't have ports over 1GE which means you'll probably top out at 960-980mbps even with the best tuning of the signals you can possibly manage. This is where going with something a bit more substantial comes into play to get those speeds above 1gbps. There are finally some routers out that have 2.5GE ports on them which lets you breakthrough the speed barriers.

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-EAP653-Wireless-Seamless-Integrated/dp/B0B5JRXDG4 - $120 for the AP
https://www.amazon.com/MikroTik-RB5009UG-S-IN-in/dp/B09GW641SL - ~$200 or less if you hunt them down but, gives you at least 1 2.5gbps port which then can go to a 2.5gbps switch to get more for more than a single AP if needed. Also, has an SFP cage for additional speed profiles from 1gbps -> 10gbps and everything in between
https://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-S-RJ10-MikroTik/dp/B078SNK1MY - $70 for the SFP module / used @ $54

So, for about $400 you can unlock the higher speeds as well as have more options as tech progresses. Now, Personally I would just use a low tech PC and make it into a router / AP setup as you can collect the foundational parts for about the same cost
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/khWfVw - case / psu / cpu / ram / etc. - $280
https://www.ebay.com/itm/363926695814 - MOBO @ $125

NIC's is where it gets tricky depending on how many ports / how fast you want to go.
5GE QNAP I'm using QXG-5G4T-111C - $200
2.5GE QNAP - QXG-2g4t - ~$100
--The only downside to this is they're not POE which means you need either a POE switch or use injectors.

With these you get 4-ports of each speed and when used in the PC sense using something like pfSense or Linux and configuring it from guides out on the net you get a very robust and speedy network device. If you have a NAS you can drop the disks into the case and have one less device sitting around. Using Linux you can tighten down the firewall and not deal with constant firmware updates you see with consumer devices.

 

[gibster]

@Tech Junky, thanks for the comprehensive reply! I started adding 2.5G switches in the house (so far have 2, 1 more will give me whole-house coverage), but yeah, the router is only 1G. The AX4400 was only $130 last year, so I went that cheaper route to get WiFi 6, and now I am seeing some benefits. When I test my Comcast connection, looks like I end up bottlenecked by the router, as I get below 1G down (940Mbps), pathetic 18Mbps upload... Not sure what Comcast can give me, I have a very decent modem (Motorola MB8611) - this one has 2.5G network, but unfortunately the router gets in the way... I may think about getting a better router, we'll see. I should also test my Comcast connection directly from the modem, am curious what speeds can be reached, if they are much higher than 1G, it may be a shame using that slow router...

 

[Tech Junky]

I had Comcast and got at least 1200/40 using a mb8600 with two ports in lacp. So, there's more on the table if you get a 2.5 router or make your own.

If your have TV's hooked up on the same line narrow down your CM feed and bypass the splitters to the outlet and put everything on the other lines. This will boost the signal to the modem to get better speeds.

 

[gibster]

@TechJunky Just read the section about multi-port NICs, didn't even know these existed, but a bit pricey.
I already have a spare system I can run Linux on, so I may go that route.
I have a few 1-port (2.5G) NICS I was thinking of using, one goes to the modem, the other goes to a switch. I figure I'm not really losing anything by using a switch, as then the modem connection becomes a bottleneck anyway, so the multi-port NICs are a bit of a waste anyway, until modems have multiple connections, and then you may need to run several LANs (unless you can set it up to use a combo of ports together)?. Without changing my AX4400, I would boost my wired speeds as much as Comcast can deliver, and until I can find a deal on a router/access point with 2.5G connection, I can do with this setup. Thanks again for the info, I wasn't really planning to speed up my network, but now I have a project, LOL.

 

[Tech Junky]

@gibster

That would be a good start to getting to the full capacity of the CM.

The multiport higher than 2.5 is helpful when you have NAS data speeds that are higher than the 2.5GE threshold.



This would be ~300MB/s roughly. Which you could easily hit with 2 spinners in a Raid 0 as that could hit up to ~450MB/s depending on the drives being used. Even higher if you're using SATA SSD's since each of those typically hits 500-550MB/s per drive. If you went hybrid with SSD's and then let the server sync them / move the data using rsync / cron you can have the best of both speed and capacity and redundancy.

With the MB8600 it has 4 gig ports though that can connect to a 4-port gig card through LACP. Though with the current BW plans 2 ports is sufficient to get 1200mbps out of the connection.

How you do things is up to you but, when PCIE slots are limited sometimes combining 2 or 4 ports into a single card makes a difference. It's also a bit simpler in the naming structure but, splitting it into two cards isn't an issue and could be worthwhile for redundancy if one card fails you're not dead int he water. I have some redundancy in my setup if push comes to shove with a failure.

5G ISP GW - 2 ports + WIFI
PC/DIY Router - 4 ports + 1 x 2.5 on the MOBO
AP - WIFI 1.5gbps / 2.5gbps uplink to the server

If one piece failed between the server or AP moving things around would still be possible until a replacement could be ordered or I could resolve the issue if it's not a HW failure. If the NIC died moving over to the MOBO port would suffice until a replacement arrived. Server died then the 5G GW would become the primary source of connectivity until a rebuild could be completed. 5G GW dies... well, that would be more of a PITA but, my phone could be a hotspot temporarily until a new one got shipped or picked up from a local store location. I also have an AX411 in the server for WIFI redundancy as an additional WAN link in the bonded connection so I can move the 5G GW around for signal testing / speed boosting.

cat /proc/net/bonding/bo0
Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v5.19.1-051901-generic

Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)
MII Status: up
MII Polling Interval (ms): 0
Up Delay (ms): 0
Down Delay (ms): 0
Peer Notification Delay (ms): 0

Slave Interface: enp9s0
MII Status: up
Speed: 1000 Mbps
Duplex: full
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 24:5e:be:4d:c4:51
Slave queue ID: 0

Slave Interface: enp8s0
MII Status: up
Speed: 1000 Mbps
Duplex: full
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 24:5e:be:4d:c4:52
Slave queue ID: 0

Slave Interface: wlp0s20f3
MII Status: up
Speed: Unknown
Duplex: Unknown
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 60:a5:e2:e8:20:f6
Slave queue ID: 0

rx rate: 866.7 Mbit/s VHT-MCS 9 80MHz short GI VHT-NSS 2, tx rate: 866.7 Mbit/s VHT-MCS 9 80MHz short GI VHT-NSS 2

 

[Tech Junky]

Found a quirk in :Linux upon doing a reboot for a kernel upgrade. Not sure what I was playing with before that caused it but, I might have been cleaning out some old firmware sitting in /lib/firmware or some other update. Anyway... the AX411 uses slightly different modules than the AX21x versions. They use the GF4 option instead of the TY that the others do. Thinking they were the same I looked up and down for the earliest AX210 package with the -39.ucode being the first I had recalled seeing in the firmware directory, I couldn't find it anywhere and then started playing with different kernel versions thinking it might be embedded in one of them. I stripped out the ucode files from the directory and imported only the GF4 modules

Maybe it was deleting the pnvm file during some tinkering and then the reboot was just coincidental w/o having put the file back. There seems to be something embedded in both versions of the card though making them look for version 72 of the firmware but, that doesn't exist anywhere but, 73 does but, they won't use it and fallback to 71. SMH @ Intel on this one. Since it's not a well documented card still at this point HTH someone searching google or the forum in getting it working on their system.

 sudo dmesg | grep iwlwifi
[    4.550491] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    4.556781] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-so-a0-gf4-a0-72.ucode failed with error -2
[    4.558051] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: api flags index 2 larger than supported by driver
[    4.558063] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: TLV_FW_FSEQ_VERSION: FSEQ Version: 0.0.2.36
[    4.558411] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: loaded firmware version 71.058653f6.0 so-a0-gf4-a0-71.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
[    4.847099] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX411 160MHz, REV=0x430
[    5.024509] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: loaded PNVM version 881c99e1
[    5.041007] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: Detected RF GF, rfid=0x3010d000
[    5.106677] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: base HW address: 60:a5:e2:e8:20:f6
[    5.126126] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3 wlp0s20f3: renamed from wlan0

 ls -l /lib/firmware | grep gf4
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root    1541932 Jul 26 03:35 iwlwifi-so-a0-gf4-a0-67.ucode
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root    1552216 Jul 26 03:35 iwlwifi-so-a0-gf4-a0-68.ucode
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root    1566352 Jul 26 03:35 iwlwifi-so-a0-gf4-a0-71.ucode
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root      28064 Aug 18 12:28 iwlwifi-so-a0-gf4-a0.pnvm