Arch Linux

Enverex

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-06-13

Posts: 159

Website

Wireless Issues (TX Retries, Speed, Disconnections)

The wireless card seems to cap out around 6MB/s even when connected at (apparently) 216Mb so throughput isn't as high as it should be (even accounting for the massive wireless overheads) but that isn't the main issue...

Currently I'm seeing a MASSIVE amount of Tx excessive retries. After copying a 4GB file the figure was at 825394.

Secondly, if I use something bluetooth at the same time as the Wireless card, it seems to fall over after a few minutes (it's fine up until that point).

The device in question is a Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 2230 BGN Mini-PCIe card (it's both a Wireless G/N card and a Bluetooth 4 card).

Stats from the device:

├─Statistics────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│RX: 3,081,083 (4.31 GiB), invalid: 0 nwid, 0 crypt, 0 frag, 11 misc                                                                                        │
│TX: 1,565,631 (129.98 MiB), mac retries: 825,493, missed beacons: 0                                                                                        │
├─Info──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│mode: Managed,  access point: 00:50:7F:56:56:68                                                                                                            │
│freq: 2.437 GHz, channel: 6,  bitrate: 135 Mbit/s                                                                                                          │
│power mgt: off,  tx-power: 16 dBm (39.81 mW)                                                                                                               │
│retry: long limit 7,  rts/cts: off,  frag: off

DMesg card info:

[    1.556918] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: pci_resource_len = 0x00002000
[    1.556919] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: pci_resource_base = ffffc90000678000
[    1.556920] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: HW Revision ID = 0xC4
[    1.556988] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X
[    1.585438] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: loaded firmware version 18.168.6.1
[    1.602743] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG disabled
[    1.602744] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS disabled
[    1.602745] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING enabled
[    1.602746] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TESTMODE disabled
[    1.602747] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_P2P disabled
[    1.602748] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 2230 BGN, REV=0xC8
[    1.602796] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S
[    1.619616] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: device EEPROM VER=0x81c, CALIB=0x6
[    1.619617] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Device SKU: 0x150
[    1.619618] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Valid Tx ant: 0x3, Valid Rx ant: 0x3
[    4.595164] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S
[    4.602971] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x0-0x0
[    4.865168] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S
[    4.872973] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x0-0x0

Essentially I'll be playing music over the network (FLAC, so semi bandwidth heavy) to a pair of Bluetooth headphones and it'll work fine for say, 4 minutes, after which the network card will just, what appears to be, lock up. After about a minute it'll respond again and everything will go back to normal for a few more minutes.

It doesn't seem to be interference as it would be a continual issue whilst both were in use, also the card outright seems to die rather than just losing signal. NetworkManager actually reports signal strength remains the same, but no traffic passes through the device.

When this happens, DMesg has (almost hundreds) of messages saying "iwlwifi: Bluetooth traffic detected, TX aggregation disabled" (very similar to that wording, unfortunately I don't have the exact error message right now). But then what I believe may be the actual problem is dotted around between those errors, which says:

iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: fail to flush all tx fifo queues

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix these issues? I assume the excessive retries is what's killing the speed, but the bigger issue is the Wireless  dropping out entirely when bluetooth is used.

Enverex

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-06-13

Posts: 159

Website

Re: Wireless Issues (TX Retries, Speed, Disconnections)

Just tried to use it again and ended up giving up. I was trying to use Bluetooth headphones and the wireless at the same time. It was ok for a minute or two and then just kept silently dropping out (not disconnecting from the AP though). The time between it happening would shorten each time until it seemed to happen every 20 seconds or so.

Here's the exact kernel output:

[301961.010199] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: fail to flush all tx fifo queues
[302045.433040] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302052.978602] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302067.127391] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302073.046653] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302076.299569] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302079.683274] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302143.254305] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302170.259993] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302203.089092] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302345.510246] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302361.812532] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302375.833424] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302383.333181] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302396.240417] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302399.632266] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302446.190562] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302466.248471] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302479.420951] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[302488.926232] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: BT traffic (2), no aggregation allowed
[303036.959778] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: fail to flush all tx fifo queues
[303157.754721] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: fail to flush all tx fifo queues
[303279.622419] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: fail to flush all tx fifo queues