Hello, everyone! Recently bought an ASUS Wi-Fi PCI-E adapter Asus PCE-AXE5400, and having troubles with it. I'm trying to use it as a 5GHz Wi-Fi hotspot for my VR headset, and it throttles down speed as if on a schedule. In VR it creates a horrible experience.
For testing, I connected my 802.11ac phone to this hotspot and ran an iperf test to max out the channel (of course I was using local IP addresses) and started monitoring the graph in the task manager — I'm on Windows 10.
Here are the results of my testing:
Normally, the speed is ~350 mbps, which is normal for 802.11ac;
However, every ~57 seconds the speed drops down and oscillates between ~115 mbps and ~188 mbps every second. It goes on for ~3-5 seconds and then it snaps back to ~350 mbps.
The same was happening with another 802.11ac phone.
What's even more interesting is that when I'm just playing games in VR I'm using just around 80-90 mbps, even "throttled" 115 mbps would've been enough for it, right? Well, no! When I'm using 80-90 mbps it throttles down all the way to 20-30 mbps instead! So it always throttles to about 30% of what's currently being used?
The problem only exists when I am using the device in hotspot mode. When I am connected to my phone's hotspot, identical tests show no sign of speed throttling.
The problem persists if I am creating a 2.4GHz hotspot.
Bluetooth is physically not connected. Drivers for Bluetooth are not installed.
When I initially start the hotspot, task manager says "802.11ax" under Connection type. When any device connects, it swaps to "802.11b" and persists until I restart the hotspot. However it seems it's just a decoration since 350 mbps is definitely not something 802.11b could ever manage.
I couldn't get any temperature data from the device because it seems it lacks a sensor.
I am honestly out of options at this point and it's driving me insane. Things I tried:
Installing the latest driver (obviously, it didn't work without it at all)
Googling
Tweaking antennas
Setting everything to be 802.11ax only and wireless mode to only 5GHz instead of dual band in device's properties
Disabling "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in Power Management tab of the device (and of the "Wi-Fi Direct" virtual adapter)
Reinstalling the driver and updating the driver from the device manager
Please help, it's the only adapter I could find which can host a 5GHz hotspot at least…
I can also try getting some more diagnostic data if you tell me what tools to use, but honestly I just hope that somebody had such a problem before and found a fix. Everything about this problem, those 30%, those almost exactly one minute intervals between throttles, all that just seems so specific and exact…
And please don't worry to suggest something I already said I tried if you are somewhat sure it might work, I'll try it again anyway, not much left to do
