This document is the result of two issues. The first issue: Occasionally I observe a laptop in the Help Center that does not “see” the wifi signal for the Help Center. The solutions for this usually involved an ethernet cable or a USB wifi dongle. Second Issue: Recently a Help Center client could not connect to the home wifi after having a fresh installation of WIndows 10 installed on their laptop. The laptop was “fully updated” after the installation.

The solution was to install the “latest” available wifi drivers. However, finding the “proper” drivers was difficult because the computer was 9 years old. The drivers were not easy to find on the Dell or Intel web sites and the “latest” drivers from Microsoft Update were not “good enough”. In this case the machine was from Dell and the internal wifi device was an Intel N 7260. Here is a link to a Dell web page that provides the driver. It appears that Dell has not maintained links to the “good driver” for the product specific support page. The page that contains the download for the proper driver is for other Dell products that utilize the same Intel N 7260 device.

Here is a link to an Intel web page that provides current and older versions of Wifi drivers.

An older computer “might not” be able to “see” the wifi signal from a “later generation” wifi router. If a router is changed/upgraded to “later standards”, your computers might need a “driver update” or a wifi dongle that is “compatible” with the later wifi “standard”. The “history” of wifi technology is important. The root cause of the problems identified above is: Earlier generations of wifi are NOT the same as current wifi. Newer wifi “standards” have modified the protocol of how wifi routers can announce their service/presence. Older devices might be able to use/see “newer” routers but they “might” need software changes/upgrades to “really work”. That appears to be the case for the issues identified above. The computer and its internal wifi device were 10 years old. The router in the house was 2 years old and did support the wifi 6 "standard". A bit more “digging” revealed the size of the wifi announcement message from a wifi 6 router can contain more bytes of information. Once again , the devil is in the details. For many years I have semi-ignored wifi specifics, because “it just worked”. We finally had a reason to understand “whats going on here”.

Here is a link to “A historical detail”.