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D4663R

Member

Registered: 2019-10-20

Posts: 1

Really slow wifi download speed (but normal upload)

EDIT: Even more strange: I just discovered that if I connect my bluetooth mouse, the download speed goes up to around 20Mbps. Still slower than my phone (and my work laptop on the same network) but definitely higher. I don't usually use my mouse (I work in i3wm), but at this point I start to think about some kind of interference when the mouse is not connected. Any ideas?

Hi,
I'm facing a strange problem with my wifi connection: the download speed is really slow, it caps around 1Mbps, while the upload speed is normal (around 10Mbps, which is correct for my connection).
On the same wifi network, my phone caps at around 30Mbps. If I try to ping google.com, I can see a lot of packet loss (around 50% and even more).

The laptop is an HP with the RTL8723be adapter. I already tested various possible solution, but without success. I tried to change the antenna (ant_sel=x), but I can't see any noticeable improvement. I also tried to install rtlwifi_new-dkms (which doesn't work at all) and rtlwifi_new-extended-dkms (which results in a very unstable and slow connection, it is a lottery to connect even if the signal level is much higher). I am using netctl/wifi-menu to connect, but the same problem is present using networkmanager.

Here some system info that could help:

$ uname -a
Linux jupiter 5.3.7-arch1-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Oct 18 00:17:03 UTC 2019 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ ip link
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp2s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 30:e1:71:95:3d:eb brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlo1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 58:00:e3:a2:2a:63 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: docker0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default
    link/ether 02:42:df:bf:11:31 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

It seems to me that I am using the correct driver:

$ lspci -v
...
03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
        DeviceName: Sanji2
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
        I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
        Memory at c1100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: rtl8723be
        Kernel modules: rtl8723be

$ dmesg | grep rtl
[   11.931437] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for rtl_bt/rtl8723b_config.bin failed with error -2
[   12.306414] rtl8723be: Using firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723befw_36.bin
[   12.308349] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'rtl_rc'
[   12.309184] rtlwifi: rtlwifi: wireless switch is on
[   12.498262] rtl8723be 0000:03:00.0 wlo1: renamed from wlan0

I also installed linux-firmware:

$ pacman -Ss linux-firmware
core/linux-firmware 20190923.417a9c6-1 (base) [installed]
    Firmware files for Linux

$ iwconfig
docker0   no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlo1      IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"FASTWEB-F32CD7"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 10:13:31:F3:2C:D7
          Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=64/70  Signal level=-46 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:101   Missed beacon:0

enp2s0    no wireless extensions.

I already tested it with linux-lts, and I also tried to downgrade up to linux 5.3.5 without improvements. I am starting to think there is something wrong with my hardware.

What do you think? Is anybody able to help me?

Thanks.
Davide

Last edited by D4663R (2019-10-20 12:27:44)