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Hello Folks
I've been going at this for a few weeks now and I can't figure out what the issue is for the life of me. Other computers on my network work fine, and the wired connection works perfectly, but the wifi is a disaster. The connection drops and reconnects over and over again, and each time it follows the same pattern: first it runs normally, but quickly the speed drops to zero, then packets are dropped, then the connection cuts. On rare occasion, the connection will work as if there were no problem - even letting me stream video - but after a reboot it goes back to its normal erratic behavior.
I've tried different using DNS servers without success, but I am inclined to believe the problem is with the wireless card, Realtek rtl8188ee, which has a pretty horrible track in recent Linux forums. I am running a dual-boot with Arch and Mint on an HP Envy, and even though I have the same internet problems on the Mint boot as the Arch, the wifi worked perfectly fine with Windows 8 before I wiped the drive. This post was pretty helpful, but updating my Arch kernel from 3.15 to 3.16 did not help, nor did updating the mint kernel from 3.13 to 3.16. I have also canvased the Arch Wifi Wiki but everything on my system apparently seems to be working - lspci -k and dmesg show that the driver is loaded and firmware is in place, I have the interface set up properly with ip link and netctlis properly configured.
Apparently, HP is in the habit of using its BIOS to ensure you can't switch hardware out, so I am stuck with rtl8188ee, and when I tried to use a USB wifi card, I get the exact same behavior. I've tried changing the driver, but I can't get any drivers to compile - I tried this driver solution, this update to the same driver, and then this chap's improved rtl8188ec driver, but no luck. Even the USB Linux driver wouldn't compile - there was an error in the C code, "create_proc_entry" is used but never defined; I don't know C so I don't know what that means. These things make me think I either have a bigger hardware problem or I am committing a wider Linux-system mistake.
I've got plenty of code that I can give, but I thought I'd start with this mini-essay. Does anybody have an idea of what is wrong? I am all ears and grateful for any input you can give.
- m
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Same issue, same hardware, same OS. Except, I haven't tried Arch.
I'll be connected according to every tool I try, but when I try to ping the router or a DNS server, nothing. Then eventually, it comes back. It's really frustrating.
Did you find a solution?
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I installed Freedom Ben's revised driver for the RTL8188EE and that seems to be working. https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver
Something I noticed was that when the connection was established prior to the desktop screen showing after login, then I wouldn't have any issues with browsing the web. When the connection was not established prior to the screen displaying, I would have the issue described above.
With the revised driver installed, I seem to be having a connection all the time at login. Hopefully, it sticks around.
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