Intel AX210 speeds capped at 20 Mbps on multiple distros

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I have tried many different forums and solutions for this issue and have still not found any resolution. I am running an Intel AX210 card and on Ubuntu, and various opinionated flavors of Arch (CachyOS, Omarchy), I seem to be stuck at a max of 20 Mbps download. It isn’t always 20 Mbps but it ALWAYS caps there.

I am dual booting with Windows 11 and have turned off Fast startup using the command powercfg /h off since it is no longer in the Control Panel UI. I get speeds of over 300 Mbps on Windows consistently.

I am currently on CachyOS with KDE Plasma and Limine as the boot loader, just because it’s what I’m most familiar with. I have an Ubuntu install media if necessary.

Heres the result of iw dev:

Interface wlan0
                ifindex 4
                wdev 0x1
                addr --:--:--:--:--:--
                ssid --------
                type managed
                channel 157 (5785 MHz), width: 20 MHz (no HT), center1: 5785 MHz
                txpower 22.00 dBm
                multicast TXQ:
                        qsz-byt qsz-pkt flows   drops   marks   overlmt hashcol tx-bytes        tx-packets
                        0       0       0       0       0       0       0       0               0

I think it’s safe to assume that the width being 20 MHz here is an issue.

As an additional note on KDE, in the Network Panel I see speeds go up a couple of bytes, and then the wifi symbol in the top left gets a blue loading symbol on top of it, and then the speeds drop down to 0, but I do not fully disconnect from the network, and it comes back in a second or two but remains slow.

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Hmm not sure. Maybe the card is falling back to legacy mode, which would explain the ~20 Mbps cap.

I came across a few threads with very similar behavior on the AX210 that might help narrow it down:

From what others are seeing, it often comes down to things like regulatory domain, firmware/kernel alignment, or AP compatibility causing HT/VHT to get disabled.

There’s also a more technical kernel report here if you want to go deeper:

Curious if anything in those matches your setup or behavior?

Oh also, welcome to the community. :handshake: