WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

ghsrkm · 2020-03-05 09:08:16

Hello, I'm a rather new Arch user, and so far I haven't had many issues outside of this particular one. I have this laptop which I use to dualboot Win10 and Arch, and the wifi speed in Arch in particular is really, really bad. My connection isn't that great, most of my devices (including this very same laptop within the Win10 partition) usually average around 17 mbps for download, but my laptop gets around 1.5 mbps at best, and normally just stays at 0.5 mbps during the day. With an ethernet connection it works great, I get ~30mbps. So I'm pretty sure the connection or the hardware aren't the roots of the problem.
I've been having this problem basically since I installed arch, and right now I'm running the kernel 5.5.7-arch1-1 x86_64. For other specifics, here are some outputs:
lspci -nn -s 01:00 | grep -i net (For the specific network adapter model)

01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:4727] (rev 01)

As for the configuration, I have the following:
sudo lshw -C network

*-network
 description: Wireless interface
 product: BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter
 vendor: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries
 physical id: 0
 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
 logical name: wlp1s0b1
 version: 01
 serial: 84:4b:f5:8e:5e:d9
 width: 64 bits
 clock: 33MHz
 capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
 configuration: broadcast=yrd driver=brcmsmac driverversion=5.5.7-arch1-1 firmware=610.812 ip=192.168.0.34 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
 resources: irq:16 memory:c250000-c2503ff

inxi -Fs (Network)

Device-1: Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter driver: bcma-pci-bridge

I'm posting both because they both list different drivers. According to the answer to this question (which is actually about Ubuntu), this particular adapter does use two drivers, both of which are found within the linux-firmware package and which seem to be indeed the ones that the commands above list. So I think the drivers aren't the issue here either.
A few things I tried after browsing for a while where configuring the regdomain (which only resulted in getting slightly higher ping) and setting net.ipv4.tcp_ecn=0, both of which didn't really help.
I'm not sure what other information could be useful so if I'm missing something important I'll post it soon.

Last edited by ghsrkm (2020-03-07 06:43:22)

seth · 2020-03-05 15:22:12

which I use to dualboot Win10 and Arch

First things first, ensure https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Du … ibernation is disabled. You will have to reboot at least windows and pot. linux (ie. shutdown linux, boot windows, disable fast boot, reboot windows, boot linux, in doubt reboot linux) to ensure the HW is in a defined state.

If this doesn't help please post the ouputs of https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ne … _interface

ghsrkm · 2020-03-05 18:10:31

seth wrote:

First things first, ensure https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Du … ibernation is disabled

Thanks, both Hibernation and Fast Boot were already disabled, just logged in to check the status and sure enough neither of them is set on.
Here's the info about the wireless network interface:

ghsrkm% ip link show wlp1s0b1
3: wlp1s0b1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000 
    link/ether 84:4b:f5:8e:5e:d9 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

ghsrkm% iw dev wlp1s0b1 link
Connected to 48:5b:39:21:94:7d (on wlp1s0b1)
        SSID: castillo 2
        freq: 2462
        RX: 3327384 bytes (37224 packets)
        TX: 104722 bytes (886 packets)
        signal: -35 dBm
        rx bitrate: 36.0 MBits/s
        tx bitrate: 6.0 MBits/s

        bss flags:      short-slot-time
        dtim period:    1
        beacon int:     100

seth · 2020-03-05 23:17:31

That seems ok.
Check your journal ("sudo journalctl -b").
Do you get frequent disconnects, or kernel module crashes (in doubt post the journal)?
In case you're using NM, try to disable https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ne … domization

ghsrkm · 2020-03-06 00:37:31

My connection is actually fairly stable, it's really slow but I can't say I've had many disconnects at all.
Here's the journal output, I can't see an error or crash that would seem to be related to the issue here so far.
Disabling MAC randomization doesn't seem to have changed much sadly, I'm getting about the same test results

seth · 2020-03-06 13:55:42

The logged session seems rather short - did you try to download sth. over the WiFi connection during those 3 minutes?
If so (or afterwards):

iwconfig wlp1s0b1

(iwconfig from wireless_tools package, has some more details about netto ./. brutto RX)

ewaller · 2020-03-06 17:57:02

Let's take a peek at the transport layer.

What is the output of cat /proc/net/wireless ?
Nevermind. Somehow I missed most of the thread.

Last edited by ewaller (2020-03-06 17:58:02)

topcat01 · 2020-03-06 18:37:02

Hi, I see you are using a Broadcom chip, BC43xx series. Do you have the corresponding firmware installed? The package is https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/b43-firmware/

Your kernel dmesg should show something like the following:

[   18.544177] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 784.2 (2012-08-15 21:35:19)
[   18.894172] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 784.2 (2012-08-15 21:35:19)

Can you please post the output of the following?

dmesg|grep b43

Last edited by topcat01 (2020-03-06 18:39:20)

topcat01 · 2020-03-06 18:45:55

When everything is fine, the command:

dmesg|grep 'b43\|Broadcom'

should produce output similar to the following:

[   14.483616] b43-phy0: Broadcom 43224 WLAN found (core revision 23)
[   14.484102] b43-phy0: Found PHY: Analog 8, Type 4 (N), Revision 6
[   14.484151] b43-phy0: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, ID 0x2056, Revision 11, Version 0
[   14.484931] Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PNLS ]
[   14.926343] b43 bcma0:1 wlp3s0b1: renamed from wlan0
[   18.544177] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 784.2 (2012-08-15 21:35:19)
[   18.894172] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 784.2 (2012-08-15 21:35:19)
[   28.877489] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 784.2 (2012-08-15 21:35:19)

I see in your log posting that the bcma0 step returned an error. This suggests you do not have the firmware?

ghsrkm · 2020-03-06 18:47:10

seth wrote:

The logged session seems rather short - did you try to download sth. over the WiFi connection during those 3 minutes?
If so (or afterwards):

I used the command shortly after booting up the computer and connecting to WiFi so that's probably why it was pretty short. Now I just tried a few downloads and here's what I got:

ghsrkm% iwconfig wlp1s0b1
wlp1s0b1  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"castillo 2"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 48:5B:39:21:94:7D   
          Bit Rate=36 Mb/s   Tx-Power=19 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-22 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:567  Invalid misc:1760   Missed beacon:0

ghsrkm% iwconfig wlp1s0b1
wlp1s0b1  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"castillo 2"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 48:5B:39:21:94:7D   
          Bit Rate=36 Mb/s   Tx-Power=19 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-19 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:640  Invalid misc:1957   Missed beacon:0

I ran the command twice, the first one is while starting a download and the second one after that download is over. For comparison's sake, it was a ~12 mb file, and here I had an average download speed of like 70 kb/s, while on a different computer connected to the same network through wifi the download speed had an average of 1.3 mb/s (with the same file of course). The increase of Tx excessive retries seems meaningful, considering it's remained fairly stable after the download was over

ghsrkm · 2020-03-06 19:08:39

topcat01 wrote:

Can you please post the output of the following?
dmesg|grep b43

Yes, I get the following:

ghsrkm% dmesg|grep b43
[   11.503537] Support for cores revisions 0x17 and 0x18 disabled by module param allhwsupport=0. Try b43.allhwsupport=1
[   11.503542] b43: probe of bcma0:1 failed with error -524

So that seems to be an issue, I did not have the firmware installed. However, I just tried installing it from the AUR, and even after the installation finishes seemingly successfully, I'm still getting the same output, even after rebooting.

topcat01 wrote:

When everything is fine, the command:
dmesg|grep 'b43\|Broadcom'
should produce output similar to the following:

After reinstalling, I'm getting this output

ghsrkm% dmesg|grep 'b43\|Broadcom'
[    1.850571] usb 1-1.3: Manufacturer: Broadcom Corp
[   11.503537] Support for cores revisions 0x17 and 0x18 disabled by module param allhwsupport=0. Try b43.allhwsupport=1
[   11.503542] b43: probe of bcma0:1 failed with error -524
[   11.503554] Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PNLS ]

The same error is showing up, so I don't know if it's an installation issue or something else, but I'll probably try what the error message suggests first.

topcat01 · 2020-03-06 22:26:30

How did that go? Btw, do you have the linux-firmware package installed as well?

Last edited by topcat01 (2020-03-06 22:28:37)

seth · 2020-03-06 22:56:27

BCM4313 isn't supported by the b43 module, https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

Tx excessive retries are scary, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=211702 suggests the prop. wl driver works better (or at least used to 3 years ago…)

topcat01 · 2020-03-06 23:29:43

Right I missed that, thanks! Hope wl works!

ghsrkm · 2020-03-07 06:42:08

seth wrote:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=211702 suggests the prop. wl driver works better (or at least used to 3 years ago…)

Well, turns out it still works better to this day. The problem has been solved by installing that module, even if the process was a bit trickier than expected, but now I'm getting speeds on par with the rest of my devices. Thanks for your help and patience.

Arch Linux

#1 2020-03-05 09:08:16

WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#2 2020-03-05 15:22:12

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#3 2020-03-05 18:10:31

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#4 2020-03-05 23:17:31

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#5 2020-03-06 00:37:31

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#6 2020-03-06 13:55:42

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#7 2020-03-06 17:57:02

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#8 2020-03-06 18:37:02

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#9 2020-03-06 18:45:55

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#10 2020-03-06 18:47:10

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#11 2020-03-06 19:08:39

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#12 2020-03-06 22:26:30

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#13 2020-03-06 22:56:27

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#14 2020-03-06 23:29:43

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

#15 2020-03-07 06:42:08

Re: WiFi connection incredibly slow [SOLVED]

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