Best WiFi dongle/pcie Card for PC Mobile Hotspot

[Magewood115]

To preface, I will be using this primarily for VR gaming over WiFi.

 

I currently use the A7000 Netgear Nighthawk ac1900 USB 3.0 WiFi dongle for all my connectivity and get fantastic speeds out of it, but when I try to set up a "Mobile Hotspot" with it, the usual 866 Mb/s speeds are locked at 196 Mb/s when connected to my HMD. I haven't found a way around this and I'm wondering if this is just a limitation of my dongle since my HMD supports WiFi 6 and I'm running WiFi 5 and there should be no speed bottlenecks on my PC side at least. What I am mostly wondering is: is there a pcie card or usb dongle that could provide faster Mobile Hotspot speeds off my PC?

 

Any suggestions or workarounds would be greatly appreciated, cheers!

[Falcon1986]

53 minutes ago, Magewood115 said:

when connected to my HMD.

What is that?

[Magewood115]

"Head Mounted Display," just the technical term for a VR headset

[Falcon1986]

9 minutes ago, Magewood115 said:

"Head Mounted Display," just the technical term for a VR headset

Which one?

 

1 hour ago, Magewood115 said:

there should be no speed bottlenecks on my PC side at least.

Is this USB WiFi adapter plugged into a USB 3 port on the PC? Or is it a USB 2 port? Is any other device plugged into the other USB ports that might be sharing the same USB header?

 

1 hour ago, Magewood115 said:

but when I try to set up a "Mobile Hotspot" with it, the usual 866 Mb/s speeds are locked at 196 Mb/s when connected to my HMD.

What WiFi settings are you using when you put the A7000 in hotspot mode? How far are you from the hotspot when you’re connected with the VR headset? Have you done a wireless survey to ensure that this hotspot isn’t overlapping with neighbouring WiFi networks?

[Magewood115]

I am using the hotspot in 802.11ac currently. I stand about 5 feet from the physical antenna when in VR. Looking at all the channels in the area for 5GHz, the hotspot operates on its own channel.

[Falcon1986]

24 minutes ago, Magewood115 said:

I am using the hotspot in 802.11ac currently.

OK.

 

But what are you using for channel width (20/40/80/160MHz?), security (WPA/WPA2/WPA3?), encryption (TKIP/AES?) and output power? Can it activate MIMO in hotspot mode?

 

Is the A7000 out in the open or is it stuck behind the computer in a corner with surrounding obstruction?

 

And you never answered the question about verifying the USB port situation on the computer itself, and which VR headset you're using specifically.

[Magewood115]

Channel width: 160 MHz
Security: WPA3
Encryption: I think AES
MIMO: as far as I know, no (which I think would probably help but the Mobile Hotspot settings are super limited on Windows 10)
Dongle is on included extension base sitting out in the open on the front edge of my desk with direct line of sight to my headset.
Headset: Quest 2
Plugged into a USB 3.0 port, is the only USB device on a Inateck Superspeed pcie USB card so has all the bandwidth for an entire pcie slot

When I connect my phone to it, I get full 866 Mb/s speeds but my headset will only connect at 192 Mb/s despite my best efforts to single out the connection on my PC and force it. I do not connect any other devices to the hotspot while it is active either.

[Falcon1986]

OK. On researching this further, it doesn’t seem like Windows 10 allows you to specify channel width, security type and encryption. The most you can do is set an SSID and password. So those details I asked for shouldn’t even be available, sorry. How were you able to create the hotspot on the A7000 with those settings? Is this through the adapter properties?

 

What do you get if you run the following command through the command prompt?

netsh wlan show interface

 

[Magewood115]

All these settings as far as I know (besides the protocol, you can change that in Windows) are standard on this dongle through the Netgear drivers. Of course those are impossible to change anything on because, why wouldn't they be, right? As for running the command prompt, I just get all the same information as before unfortunately, just through the command window, I originally just got all the other info through the adapter properties. It's probably time to get a new router and jump to WiFi 6 anyway since I upgraded to gigabit fiber a few months ago, that would definitely be faster by any measurement. I guess the saving grace is my latency is stupid low at 3 ms over the Hotspot so that's something I suppose. Thank you for your help @Falcon1986! I'll definitely keep that cmd prompt handy to keep updates on it periodically, I think I might try a full reset on my Quest 2 just to see if that shakes anything loose, I've been having another bug on it that Oculus was hopeless to try and fix so I guess we'll see! Best of luck out there!