I’m still alive, just super busy these days… here’s a quick one for anyone using the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 (the issue also impacts a bunch of other models).
It turns out there are multiple models of the Lenovo ThinkPad T14, one with an Intel wireless NIC and one with a Realtek wireless NIC. We quickly discovered that the model with a Realtek RTL8852AE WiFi 6 802.11ax PCIe adapter was having a lot of issues staying connected to a number of different Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers in different physical locations. The symptom displayed to the user as an inability to pull a DHCP address, even though the device showed it was connected to the SSID. In the end it turns out that a driver released on August 10, 2021 (6001.0.10.334) that apparently fixes an issue when clients are using a Cisco wireless infrastructure. Unfortunately there’s no mention of what exactly the issue was in the release notes.
You can find the updated driver and release notes at the following link;
I’ve been seeing a lot of issues as we move to WiFi 6 access points – currently rolling out Juniper MIST AP43s. And in the vast majority of these cases older drivers are the problem. A quick upgrade to the latest and greatest driver is solving the majority of issues. So if you are having issues with the WiFi 6 based access point or client, I would strongly suggest you update your driver before you fire up WireShark.
Cheers!