What is truly frustrating is that all vendors involved are likely members of the Wi-Fi Alliance, whose "interoperability" testing obviously isn't getting it done.
One man's opinion. ________________________________ From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> on behalf of Ethan Grinnell <grinn...@pdx.edu> Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2020 5:31:30 PM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Status of Wi-Fi 6 Client Drivers? I recently wanted to do testing with an affected driver and was able to obtain them on OEM websites instead of directly from Intel. This build has the issue with WiFi6 SSID visibility: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/DS103594 Also, I noticed that the Windows 10 built-in driver for many Intel WiFi chips is version 17.x (It was on my test client) which didn't seem to have the issue. So that's fun, it's not just versions lower than some baseline build number being affected. I didn't test many different builds, but it looked like 17.x was good, 18.x, 19.x, and 20.x had some affected builds. More information here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000054799/network-and-i-o/wireless.html The issue is still around. Many BYOD types require users to update their own drivers, which few seem to do. Windows doesn't always update the drivers either, so there could potentially be lingering issues from outdated drivers for a long time. Ethan Grinnell CCIE R&S #39723, BS CmpE Network Engineer Office of Information Technology, Technology Infrastructure, Networking Portland State University On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 2:01 PM Mike Atkins <matk...@nd.edu<mailto:matk...@nd.edu>> wrote: We deployed our ax capable APs without ax enabled for the same Intel driver issues. I wanted to test something with a flawed driver recently and noticed it is no longer available from Intel. I think Intel revamped their downloads page at the end of last year to remove all but the newest revisions of drivers. We use SecureW2 for eduroam onboarding so we can get a sense of drivers used by Windows devices. We will probably enable Wi-Fi 6 next year if the numbers continue to look good. Mike Atkins Infrastructure Architect Office of Information Technology University of Notre Dame Phone: 574-631-7210 ---- .__o ----- _-\_<, --- (*)/'(*) From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>> On Behalf Of Nadim El-Khoury Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2020 4:41 PM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Status of Wi-Fi 6 Client Drivers? Hi Eric, One more thing that I forgot to answer. We elected to keep Wi-Fi 6 enabled and just disabled it in the vicinity of our Technical Support Center (User Support) in the Library building. Best, Nadim On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 4:35 PM Floyd, Brad <bfl...@mail.smu.edu<mailto:bfl...@mail.smu.edu>> wrote: Eric, I have deployed almost 200 of the Aruba 530 series APs so far in the last 2-3 months. I saw, first hand, what happens with the 802.11ax enabled SSID and the flawed Intel drivers. The SSIDs don't appear to those devices. When we were discussing whether or not to deploy the ax APs vs stick with ac APs, we decided we wanted the longer remaining life span before end-of-sale / end-of-support of the APs of the ax vs the ac. The added benefit Aruba provides is that it is very simple to disable the features (just a single check box on a profile). We figure we can wait for a semester or two and schedule an attempt to re-enable the features. A driver update definitely fixes the issue, but since we are so heavily loaded with BYOD devices that we have no control over, this was a better option for us. Hopefully this helps. Thanks, Brad -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU>] On Behalf Of Kenny, Eric Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2020 3:14 PM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU<mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Status of Wi-Fi 6 Client Drivers? Hi All, I know on-campus populations might not be what they usually are right now, but I was wondering if anyone has seen reports of buggy client side drivers causing issues with 802.11ax. Specifically we are using the Aruba AP-530 series AP. There were some Intel chips that had challenges a few months back, but a driver update resolved the issue. We are considering disabling the Wi-Fi6 capability of the APs to prevent issues with outdated drivers, so we’d like to hear your observations so far if this is still a real problem. Thank you, Eric Kenny Network Architect | Infrastructure Technology Services Harvard University Information Technology ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. 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