[SOLVED] How to fix WiFi speed jumping between 72mbps and 144kbps?

Feb 17, 2020
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For at least a year, regardless of the router I'm connecting to, sometimes my WiFi speed on my 4 year old Lenovo G50 laptop starts jumping between 72mbps and 144kbps, no other value in between. Resetting the connection doesn't solve the problem, and I'm at a complete loss for what may be causing it (running Windows 10).

Other times the connection speed can fall to 5.5mbps, though resetting the connection seems to resolve it. Could it be a faulty WiFi adapter or other hardware on the laptop? Or might it be solvable with an appropriate driver? Any insightful suggestions are welcome, thanks in advance.

Harry
 
Solution
Those number you see are called the MCS value. The are not really a speed they more represent the way the data is encoded. You can look the tables up and see.

Pretty much this means you are getting very strong signals but for some reason it moving between 1 data stream and 2 data streams. Wifi attempts to send 2 overlapping signals and extract them at the far end. It works better than I would expect.

Now it could be you have a broken antenna cable that intermittently disconnects the second antenna. That is not real likely. It could I suppose be a defective wifi card but again not real likely.

What mostly likely happens is the second signal is not following exactly the same path in your house and is getting lost...
Those number you see are called the MCS value. The are not really a speed they more represent the way the data is encoded. You can look the tables up and see.

Pretty much this means you are getting very strong signals but for some reason it moving between 1 data stream and 2 data streams. Wifi attempts to send 2 overlapping signals and extract them at the far end. It works better than I would expect.

Now it could be you have a broken antenna cable that intermittently disconnects the second antenna. That is not real likely. It could I suppose be a defective wifi card but again not real likely.

What mostly likely happens is the second signal is not following exactly the same path in your house and is getting lost. Could be as simple as door in some room being open or closed. When used inside a house wifi signals bounce all over the wall etc so it is extremely hard to know what affects them.
 
Solution
goto the device manager, switch to the power mgmt tab for the Wifi adapter
untick Allow the PC to turn off this device to save power

For at least a year, regardless of the router I'm connecting to, sometimes my WiFi speed on my 4 year old Lenovo G50 laptop starts jumping between 72mbps and 144kbps, no other value in between. Resetting the connection doesn't solve the problem, and I'm at a complete loss for what may be causing it (running Windows 10).

Other times the connection speed can fall to 5.5mbps, though resetting the connection seems to resolve it. Could it be a faulty WiFi adapter or other hardware on the laptop? Or might it be solvable with an appropriate driver? Any insightful suggestions are welcome, thanks in advance.

Harry