Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

Martinsos · 2017-07-23 22:00:11

I bought a bluetooth keyboard and when going to connect it to my laptop, I realized I have never set up bluetooth.

I went to Archlinux Wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bluetooth) and following instructions there I:
1. Installed `bluez` and `bluez-utils`, 2. run `modprobe btusb`, 3. enabled bluetooth service.

After that I installed blueberry (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/comm … blueberry/), which starts on boot and shows nice tray icon, where I can control bluetooth.
I see that it works and recognizes nearby bluetooth devices, however my wifi becomes incredibly slow! I tried testing it by turning bluetooth on and off while running speedtest and as soon as it is turned off wifi starts picking up, and when bluetooth is turned on wifi starts being super slow.

I tried following advice that I found internet, which said that bluetooth is probably interfering with wifi so I should add `option iwlwifi bt_coex_active=N` to /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf, however that did not help -> wifi now became super slow even when bluetooth is off.
One thing I noticed is that in blueberry gui, it is constantly searching for devices -> is that ok?

I have no idea what to do next! Obviously bluetooth is interfering with wifi, but I do not know how to fix that. I am thankful for any help!

Machine:
HP Omen 15
4.10.16-1-ck-haswell

lsusb:
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1bcf:2c7e Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8087:07dc Intel Corp.
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 04f3:203f Elan Microelectronics Corp.
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:c534 Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

seth · 2017-07-24 07:50:58

Physical limitation, the internet is full of regarding complaints :-(

The only effective solution is to use the 5GHz band for WiFi.

The 2.4 GHz band is shared between the technologies will be in "some" conflict (w/ the impact being determined by the hardware layout). The option you deactivated schedules/coordinates the usage to avoid interference, but that comes at a penalty.

If you've control over the router and need to stick with 2.4GHz, select a (try an outer) channel instead of "auto".

"bluetoothctl scan off" should disable device discovering and *might* improve your situation.

Martinsos · 2017-07-24 13:02:18

Unfortunately, my version of laptop does not support 5Ghz band (which is pretty unusual for such a new laptop)!
I have dual booth with windows, and there are no problems on windows, so it is obviously possible to get it working. I wonder how windows manage this.

seth · 2017-07-24 13:37:15

"not" - both drivers are provided by intel ;-)

It's hard to say where the difference is - BT may not be discoverable on windows or even powered on (unless there's an estblished connection)
Did you try turning off bluetooth discoverability (which should default to off anyway, I assume blueberry turns it on)
Another thing may be the WiFi part - are you using the same profile (11g or 11n) on both systems?
The problem might also be purely with blueberry (never used, but I only have atheros chips as well), sotry getting rid of that and control BT as god meant it, ie. using bluetoothctl ;-)

Martinsos · 2017-07-24 14:37:06

Got it, thanks. I will try going with the bluetoothctl as the first step and see how that goes. I was hoping to use blueberry since it offers the nice interface and I don't have to remember the bluetoothctl commands , but I can do without it.
I will report how it goes.

R00KIE · 2017-07-24 15:31:50

Give it a go only with bluetoothctl and see if you can make things work. If after that things work and you still want a gui frontend for bluetooth there is also blueman, but I don't if the functionality of blueman and blueberry intersect.

Martinsos · 2017-07-30 12:22:46

I tried using bluetoothctl and while I managed to connect to the device (keyboard), wifi again became incredibly slow. It turned out that happens as soon as I turn on the bluetooth (`power on` in bluetoothctl), so it seems like the problem was not in Blueberry. I tried turning scanning on and off but it had no effect. So even without any devices connected and without scanning on, as soon as I turn the bluetooth on, the wifi becomes unusable.

Then I went to windows (I have dual boot) and checked there, it said bluetooth is on and wifi was working fine. However, after I connected device, wifi again became unusable! So I guess you were right, that bluetooth was not really on or was in some weird state.

I was hoping this will be a problem just in Arch and that I just needed to configure something, but it seems like it is a problem with my machine, HP Omen -> how is it possible that they created a device which can not use bluetooth and wifi at the same moment!? I am off to searching for a solution for that (maybe buying bluetooth dongle?).

seth · 2017-07-30 13:04:47

Too slim, too much shiny metal, maybe just a production error.
=> RTM.

If you're lucky, the thing has multiple antennas that you can control with iw (or the windows driver) or you can adjust BT power in BIOS/UEFI?
Otherwise, anything that you can plug outside (preferably BT) should indeed "solve" the problem by removing the interference the hard way, but that's oc. a kludge :-(

ewaller · 2017-07-30 15:06:57

seth wrote:

The 2.4 GHz band is shared between the technologies will be in "some" conflict (w/ the impact being determined by the hardware layout).

Information only, from https://signalhound.com/news/practical- … onitoring/

Look at this spectrum analyzer plot
https://robybmqqy5-flywheel.netdna-ssl. … 68x627.jpg

Signal Hunters web site wrote:

The persistent display (bottom) demonstrates a frequency hopping Bluetooth (the sharp spikes) signal and a fixed channel WiFi (broad rippled signal), where the Bluetooth signal is interfering with the WiFi signal. It can be observed in the waterfall display (top) that the Bluetooth signal attempts to avoid the WiFi signal, but has limited options considering the clutter within the 2.4 GHz ISM band.

This is what you are fighting. Perhaps a different channel in the 2.5GHz spectrum might help?

Martinsos · 2017-08-02 10:35:06

Thank you all -> I ended up going for the simplest solutions, buying a dongle, for now. Now there are no interferences and I managed to connect the keyboard and get it working, however I am struggling with figuring out how to automatically connect it in the future.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bl … after_boot says that I can just set up an option in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf to power on all controllers as they are found, however that is going to be a problem for me since now I have two controllers and I only want to use one (dongle).
I did also find https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bluetooth_keyboard, where they describe how to do it using hci* commands, but they are deprecated now.
I am not sure how to approach this one, do you have any advice? What I would love to achieve is to have my integrated controller ignored, my dongle controller automatically powered on and connected with the keyboard.

By the way, except for finding arch wiki page on bluetoothctl, I had very hard time finding any documentation. I know bluez is the main thing for the bluetooth so I was also looking at it, but found no handy config options or anything that I could use.

I am possibly considering going with something like this https://gist.github.com/RamonGilabert/0 … b4d9fb0055 -> using bluetoothctl in automated way, but this is hacky so I would rather avoid it.

Thanks a lot!

Last edited by Martinsos (2017-08-02 10:37:15)

Arch Linux

#1 2017-07-23 22:00:11

Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#2 2017-07-24 07:50:58

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#3 2017-07-24 13:02:18

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#4 2017-07-24 13:37:15

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#5 2017-07-24 14:37:06

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#6 2017-07-24 15:31:50

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#7 2017-07-30 12:22:46

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#8 2017-07-30 13:04:47

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#9 2017-07-30 15:06:57

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

#10 2017-08-02 10:35:06

Re: Wifi not working when bluetooth is on

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