Intel Wifi Driver Changes For 2021 Homewood Access Points

Received from JHU's Wireless team on 1/7/21

While testing out the new standard wireless access point for deployment across the enterprise, the wireless team has learned that some devices may have trouble finding a wireless network when connecting to the new Cisco 9120 wireless access points. This failure to see the new access points is due to a driver issue on the Intel card. Devices that experience this issue will need to go out to the INTEL site to download the latest driver updates. Simply going into the device and selecting update drivers will not install the correct driver. Below is a link to the Intel Page for more details. Please use this page to download and install new drivers for your affected devices. Currently, Network Wireless has deployed the Cisco 9120s in limited quantities in the JHH East Baltimore campus and on the JHU Homewood campus. Technical teams can reach out to wirelessteam@jhu.edu for any questions and locations where devices can be tested for compatibility.

This link provides the latest drivers that are compatible:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000054799/network-and-io/wireless.html

Depending on the Wi-Fi driver version used, Intel(r) Wireless Adapters supporting 802.11ac may not show Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) networks in their scan lists, and as a result, might not be able to connect to Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) capable wireless routers and access points, even at 802.11ac speeds.

After installing the latest recommended driver, devices will be able to see the access points and connect.