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joetemp

Member

Registered: 2013-12-16

Posts: 73

Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

My Wi-Fi speed SUCKS on my laptop. I know that it's not a problem with my ISP or my router. How do I know that you ask? I have an iPhone 4 with NO cellular service/contract that I use around the house on Wi-Fi only. It's fast as can be. I stream music on it, listen to podcasts, search for things quickly, watch YouTube videos... you name it.

It is SO much faster than my laptop, that often times, while I'm waiting for a page on my laptop, I'll take the iPhone out of my pocket, search for what I was looking for, read several pages, solve my problem and slide it back into my pocket while I'm still waiting for the page to load on the laptop. Sometimes it takes MINUTES to get a page on the laptop. It's ridiculous.

I'm not a networking guru... so I have no idea where to start.

Here is the output of

iwconfig

wlp2s0    IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:"HOME-CE92"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:1D:D3:51:CE:90   
          Bit Rate=78 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=60/70  Signal level=-50 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:156   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

enp4s0    no wireless extensions.

Any ideas on how I can fix this? Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

I'm not a networking guru... so I have no idea where to start.

Well, you should at least post the hardware in use...

joetemp

Member

Registered: 2013-12-16

Posts: 73

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

I'm on a Sony Vaio VPCEA... I don't know what type of wifi hardware it has, as I no longer have the instruction manual... I don't think.

BTW, my profuse apologies for such a long delay. It's been a really busy month.

Last edited by joetemp (2014-07-08 15:20:58)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

I don't know that the instruction manual would necessarily even tell you what the chipset would be.   But judging by the persistent interface name, it is a PCI device.  So use lspci to find out.

joetemp

Member

Registered: 2013-12-16

Posts: 73

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

Here is the output of that:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 05)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6200 (rev 35)
03:00.0 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd MMC/SD Host Controller
03:00.1 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5U2xx (R5U230 / R5U231 / R5U241) [Memory Stick Host Controller]
03:00.4 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd MMC/SD Host Controller
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Yukon Optima 88E8059 [PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Controller with AVB] (rev 11)
3f:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02)
3f:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02)
3f:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02)
3f:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02)
3f:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)
3f:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6200 (rev 35)

This would be what you are looking for.  So now you need to get more info on that.  Use lspci with the verbose switch and run it on just 02:00.0 with the -s switch.

joetemp

Member

Registered: 2013-12-16

Posts: 73

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

Ok... I'll do that when I'm able. Thanks a ton!

Pse

Member

Registered: 2008-03-15

Posts: 413

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

Would it be possible for you to test this with another wifi router? If you don't have one, take your laptop to a public place with wifi and see if you still get slow speeds. I've seen weird incompatibilites with some wifi hardware in the past.

I've also seen problems with certain wifi channels. Would it be possible for you to try different settings in your router? Switch to different wifi channels, etc...

kokoko3k

Member

Registered: 2008-11-14

Posts: 2,420

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

You could also try to configure your router in a non-mixed wifi mode, i think it helped me in the past, but i could be wrong.

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joetemp

Member

Registered: 2013-12-16

Posts: 73

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

Well, that's kind of what I'm thinking. Because it's not super slow ALL the time. Just sometimes. But it doesn't explain why other devices are fine. I have a Beaglebone Black doing nothing right now. Should I build a router with it, instead of the sketchy one Comcast gave me? Anything to be gained there?

Jcrash

Member

From: Toronto

Registered: 2012-11-12

Posts: 13

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

Does your modem have some type of portal you can log into?  Look for an event log.

I have a Thompson cable modem; and the portal can be reached through 192.168.100.1 in any browser.

joetemp

Member

Registered: 2013-12-16

Posts: 73

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

I'll be completely honest with you... I don't know. I could certainly look into it but Comcast ALWAYS gives me a hard time about using Linux. They have for years. My Windows partition is not working at the moment. So, any non web software won't work. I'll see what they have.

joetemp

Member

Registered: 2013-12-16

Posts: 73

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

I decided I just need a wired connection. I read an article on hacker news the other day that explained some of the problems in the Linux Kernel as it pertains to wifi and it convinced me that my time would be better spend elsewhere. Thanks for all of you who took the time to post ideas.

acidicX

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2014-01-19

Posts: 30

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

As a last try, you could disable power_save for your wifi card. I've had problems with that on Intel wifi cards - although only on enterprise networks. But you could try it anyway, no harm done, you can always reverse it.
In your case, exec as root:

iw wlp2s0 set power_save off

joetemp

Member

Registered: 2013-12-16

Posts: 73

Re: Wi-Fi is painfully slow on laptop

@acidicX Thanks so much for that tip. I haven't had a ton of problems lately but if I do, I will give this a shot.