Intel AX200 stuck at 54 Mbps legacy mode on 5 GHz with Rogers XB8 router — Fedora 44

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1

Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 consistently associates in legacy 802.11a mode (54 Mbps, long preamble, no HT) when connecting to a Rogers XB8 (Wi-Fi 6) router on the 5 GHz band. The card and AP both advertise full HT/VHT/HE capabilities, but the association never negotiates HT or higher modes.

Hardware

  • Laptop: ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14
  • Wi-Fi Card: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz
  • PCI ID: 2723/0084, rev=0x340, rfid=0x10a100
  • Antennas: TX 0x3 RX 0x3 (2x2)

Software

  • OS: Fedora 44
  • Kernel: 6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64
  • Firmware: 77.f39cc7f9.0 cc-a0-77.ucode (latest linux-firmware)
  • Tested with both wpa_supplicant and iwd backends — same result

Router

  • Rogers XB8 (Comcast/CommScope Wi-Fi 6 gateway)
  • BSSID: 12:36:aa:56:5c:6a
  • Channel: 157 (5785 MHz)
  • AP advertises HT/VHT/HE capabilities in beacon

Observed behaviour

tx bitrate: 54.0 MBit/s
rx bitrate: 54.0 MBit/s
preamble: long
bss flags: short-slot-time
width: 20 MHz (no HT)

Expected behaviour Connection should negotiate HT40 or VHT80 resulting in 300+ Mbps link rates.

Card capabilities confirmed working (iw phy phy0 info):

Band 2 (5 GHz):
  HT20/HT40, HT Max RX: 300 Mbps
  VHT: 160 MHz, MCS 0-9 (2 streams)
  HE: 160 MHz, MCS 0-11 (2 streams)

AP beacon capabilities (iw dev scan): AP advertises HT/VHT/HE IEs. HT operation field shows STA channel width: any.

Things already tried (no effect)

  • options iwlmvm power_scheme=1
  • options iwlwifi 11n_disable=0 (was already 0)
  • options iwlwifi power_save=0 uapsd_disable=1
  • Rebuilt initramfs with dracut --force and rebooted after each change
  • Disabled MAC randomization
  • Forced WPA2-PSK only (AP supports PSK+SAE)
  • Forced 5 GHz band: 802-11-wireless.band a
  • Switched Wi-Fi backend to iwd
  • Updated linux-firmware (already latest: cc-a0-77.ucode)
  • Disabled IPv6
  • Disabled Wi-Fi power saving (confirmed Power save: off)

Possible cause

The AP beacon contains:

Country: CA Environment: bogus

The 802.11 spec only defines indoor, outdoor, and any for the Environment field in the Country IE. The bogus value is non-standard and may be causing the AX200 firmware to fall back to legacy mode as a regulatory safety measure — refusing to use HT/VHT/HE because it can’t parse the regdomain advertisement.

Has anyone else seen this with XB8 / CommScope gateways on Fedora? Happy to provide full iw scan output, dmesg, or iwlwifi debug logs if useful.

2

I have the same issue and have also tried the same steps. I would like to add that as of around 2 months ago, it would negotiate a 300mbit/s+ link.