Arch Linux

steve_seagulls

Member

Registered: 2016-03-09

Posts: 1

Unstable Wi-fi Connection, need help diagnosing

Greetings.

I am a new Arch user with a brand new desktop and I am having trouble maintaining a stable Wi-Fi connection. Most of the time the connection works fine but then there seem to be periods of time where chrome will hang on "Resolving Host", Spotify will stop streaming, my downloads will be interrupted, etc. This type of behavior does not happen using the same hardware on Windows 10 so I don't think it is an issue with my ISP or router. Here is what I can tell you so far.

I am using a TP-Link AC1900 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Adapter "Archer T9E"

lscpi -v

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device 0619
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
Memory at df400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
Memory at df200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: wl
Kernel modules: bcma, wl

From the AUR I have installed broadcom-wl-dkms and it has been updated to the latest version via yaourt.

yaourt -Q broadcom-wl-dkms

local/broadcom-wl-dkms 6.30.223.271-5

I use netctl to manage my network connection. Here is my profile.

Description='Home Wifi'
Interface=wlp3s0
Connection=wireless
Security=wpa
ESSID=********
Key=********
IP=static
Address=192.168.1.69/24
Gateway=192.168.1.1

Here is my /etc/resolv.conf

# Google IPv4 nameservers
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

# Google IPv6 nameservers
nameserver 2001:4860:4860::8888
nameserver 2001:4860:4860::8844

Here is some more information from the ip tool.

ip addr show dev wlp3s0

3: wlp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether f4:f2:6d:7e:78:3a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.69/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global wlp3s0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::f6f2:6dff:fe7e:783a/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

This is what I see with dmesg. I'm not sure if this indicates any sort of problem.

dmesg

[ 1889.968711] ERROR @wl_dev_intvar_get : error (-1)
[ 1889.968719] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_get_tx_power : error (-1)
[ 1904.351534] ERROR @wl_dev_intvar_get : error (-1)
[ 1904.351542] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_get_tx_power : error (-1)
[ 1928.657399] ERROR @wl_dev_intvar_get : error (-1)
[ 1928.657409] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_get_tx_power : error (-1)
[ 1933.341464] ERROR @wl_dev_intvar_get : error (-1)
[ 1933.341473] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_get_tx_power : error (-1)
[ 1933.671288] ERROR @wl_dev_intvar_get : error (-1)
[ 1933.671297] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_get_tx_power : error (-1)

I can ping okay.

ping -c4 www.archlinux.org

PING gudrun.archlinux.org (66.211.214.131) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from gudrun.archlinux.org (66.211.214.131): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=81.8 ms
64 bytes from gudrun.archlinux.org (66.211.214.131): icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=76.5 ms
64 bytes from gudrun.archlinux.org (66.211.214.131): icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=69.4 ms
64 bytes from gudrun.archlinux.org (66.211.214.131): icmp_seq=4 ttl=48 time=83.4 ms

--- gudrun.archlinux.org ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 69.403/77.814/83.471/5.491 ms

I really am at a loss about what could be causing my slowdowns. Are there any other tools I can use or questions I can askto help diagnose why my connection would drop or slow down? Is it a driver issue? I hope it isn't a driver issue.

Docbroke

Member

From: India

Registered: 2015-06-13

Posts: 1,433

Re: Unstable Wi-fi Connection, need help diagnosing

probably driver issue, however as per this page bcm4360 is only supported by wl driver that you are already using,

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/b43

---

Arch is home!
https://github.com/Docbroke

anserk

Member

Registered: 2015-07-29

Posts: 6

Re: Unstable Wi-fi Connection, need help diagnosing

Did you make any progress with this issue ?