Upgrading to Wi-Fi 6 — high speed at low cost
This post is written by non-techie for non-techies and has a hardware-update experience sharing as its purpose.
On 9th February 2021 the new standard IEEE 802.11ax (aka Wi-Fi 6) was officially approved . The previous standard comes from 2013. Basically it means that we have a new connectivity trend for the next 5+ years and it’s a great time for update.
Does it worth for me?
Well, it depends. The end speed on your WLAN device consists of 3 factors:
- your base signal/speed — what do you receive from your internet provider
- your broadcasting hardware — which router do you have
- your client hardware — which WLAN card your device has
Let’s have a closer look at them.
Base speed
We start here because we have the smallest control over this factor. You should answer following questions:
Which internet speed does my provider promise?
If it’s 100Mbit/sec or less — it’s probably not worth to do anything with your home setup yet. Most of older hardware support such speed and you should first negotiate a better internet speed with your provider.
If the speed your provider promises is (much) higher — we go to the next question:
Is the actual speed close to the promised one?
Providers often name the highest achievable speed in the contract for marketing reasons. It doesn’t mean that you have it on a daily basis. What would be an acceptable deviation? I personally would tolerate an up to 50% speed drop.
To measure the actual speed you should connect your device to the router via cable - to make sure that WLAN doesn’t cut it off. Keep in mind that some older Ethernet cables have an up to 100Mbit/sec throughput. You need a “Gigabit” Ethernet cable (cable-categories Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6a, the category is written on the cable).
The most known tool for speed measuring is https://www.speedtest.net/. I will use in in my example. My provider promises 1Gbit/sec and I usually get ca. 600 Mbit/sec via cable.
Is the WLAN speed close to the wired one?
Now lets unplug the Ethernet cable and measure the WLAN speed. This is the result I got:
Almost 10 times cutoff — this doesn’t look good. And the problem is definitely in a home hardware setup — router and/or client.
Updating the router
Updating the WLAN router is relatively easy, because in most of the cases it sets up automatically and no manual settings are required. Just put it instead the old one, connect to it (how — check in manual) and follow its instructions.
When selecting the router, make sure that it supports Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and it supports ≥1 Gbit/sec speed.
There’re already many offers for any budget. I got a router from Honor for 35€ (it was a sale, the regular price is ca. 50€). It provides up to 3 Gbit/sec and has a great value for its price.
After update my internet speed stayed still. Which is predictable, considering that I’m using an old Windows brick for the test. Its WLAN chip is outdated and needs to be replaced.
Updating the WLAN card
First you need to find out, what kind of WLAN chip you need. You can find it in your laptop specs, or have a look under its hood, how I did:
Most probably you will see a PCI Express (PCIe) Wireless Card (like on the picture above). This interface is a standard for older laptops.
One important thing — the card has two sizes: a “full” and a “half” (aka mini). Be sure you know the size you need. A full-size card can be replaced with a half-size, but not vice versa, due to the lack of space.
Now we can proceed to the card purchase. You can go with an “official” Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 card, but afaik it exists only in a full-size format. I needed a half-size so I got its half-size clone from Aliexpress for 18€.
After a month the it arrived and now it’s time to replace the card. I disconnect and remove the old card:
On the next picture you can see the old and the new cards. There’s also a half-size-to-full-size extender which arrived with the new card:
Putting the new card in slot and connecting it:
And we’re done! Windows recognises the new card as Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 and installs the lates drivers. You just need to reconnect to your WLAN (credentials are stored on the card) and measure the speed. This is what I got:
Not bad, right? 8-times speed boost for 53€. Now I can finally watch Youtube in 4K resolution :)
Few last advices:
- if you’re not sure about your card size — get a mini one. It comes from Aliexpress with an extender
- get a precise screwdrivers set. Otherwise you’ll have to screw with a knife, which is not a pleasant experience
