Is my network card dead?

K4LCIFER · 2022-03-19 03:49:53

I've recently enctountered some extremely strange network behaviour on my desktop. All of a sudden today I have extremely slow and intermittent network speeds when I shouldn't. I generally get around 80Mb/s, but am getting around 300KiB/s when trying to dowload with pacman. When I speedtest with speedtest.net I'll initially get around 60Mbps, but then it freezes and drops to a lower level, freezes and drops, over and over. Eventually the computer will just completely disconnect.

Only my desktop exhibits these issues. No other device on the network has the same problems.

Here is what I have tried so far:
- Tried updating.
- Tried with VPN disconnected
- Tried with VPN connected
- Tried connected to my phone as a hotspot to isolate from the LAN
- Enabled and disabled WiFi in GNOME Settings
- Removed the WiFi network from WiFi settings, and re-added it.
- Rebooted multiple times
- Did a system update (albeit extremely slowly. I had to remove all the big packages that were set to update as if I let pacman run long enough on the slow speeds, eventually the desktop just disconnected from the internet)
- I can ping my router no problem
- When I look at the network devices from my router settings, I see that the router says that the router says that the current network speed is 14mbps which makes no sense. The network card that I have is capable of 1Gbps. An interesting thing that I see is that the desktop is connecting over 2.4GHz, when it should be connecting to 5GHz. Every other device on the network besides my printer is connected to 5GHz.
- Connecting to my phones hotspot over USB works perfectly fine, with none of the above issues.
- Connecting over ethernet works perfectly fine, with none of the above issues.
- I have also forced every other 5GHz channel that my router offers to no avail.

OS: Arch Linux
DE: Gnome Wayland
Network manager: NetworkManager

Last edited by K4LCIFER (2022-03-19 04:58:37)

seth · 2022-03-19 07:03:49

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855 …

- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Networ … _interface
- lspci
- find /etc/systemd -type l -exec test -f {} \; -print | awk -F'/' '{ printf ("%-40s | %s\n", $(NF-0), $(NF-1)) }' | sort -f
- and a complete system journal (sudo journalctl -b)

Connecting to my phones hotspot over USB

That's not a thing - you're either tethering or using the phone as a hotspot.

extremely slowly. I had to remove all the big packages that were set to update

So you ran a partial update? And despite

Connecting over ethernet works perfectly fine, with none of the above issues.

???

crem · 2022-03-19 19:45:22

Is it a wifi connection or cable?

Today after the arch update exactly the same started to happen with my WIFI connection. Drops every few minutes to very low speeds, and after 10-20 minutes disconnects completely.

When I connect with cable, everything is fine. Also I've tried to boot with some old Linux live CD, and it doesn't have this problem.

So I'm fairly sure that it's arch update that caused that.
I use "testing" channel (and "community-testing" and "multilib-testing"), do you use those repos as well?

My WIFI card is a PCI card, lspci sees it as "Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)".

seth · 2022-03-19 20:13:18

K4LCIFER wrote:

- Enabled and disabled WiFi in GNOME Settings
- Removed the WiFi network from WiFi settings, and re-added it.
…
- Connecting over ethernet works perfectly fine, with none of the above issues.

seth wrote:

- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Networ … _interface
- lspci
- find /etc/systemd -type l -exec test -f {} \; -print | awk -F'/' '{ printf ("%-40s | %s\n", $(NF-0), $(NF-1)) }' | sort -f
- and a complete system journal (sudo journalctl -b)

crem · 2022-03-19 20:40:44

journalctl
iw
lspci
systemd

seth · 2022-03-19 21:15:36

You've netctl and an explicit wpa_supplicant service enabled, disable wpa_supplicant, netctl will invoke it itself.
The signal is ok, but the carrier drops out pretty mch immediately after it's gained.

You're on ath9k like https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=274985 - so there's pattern (so far)
There're no apparent conflicts in that users journal and he gets "CTRL-EVENT-BEACON-LOSS" out of a exceptionally good signal.

=> Try the behavior of the LTS kernel, since there's a good chance this is a bug in the ath9k module.
Compare "systool -vm ath9k" and try "ath9k.nohwcrypt=1"

K4LCIFER · 2022-03-19 23:34:47

seth wrote:

- lspci

lspci output

seth wrote:

- find /etc/systemd -type l -exec test -f {} \; -print | awk -F'/' '{ printf ("%-40s | %s\n", $(NF-0), $(NF-1)) }' | sort -f

systemd output

seth wrote:

- and a complete system journal (sudo journalctl -b)

The original output was too big for paste bin, so I had to remove the redundant/repetitious output from the logfile; however, I left a few repetitions of the output and a note when it was removed so you can see what I have removed.
journalctl output

seth wrote:

Connecting to my phones hotspot over USB
That's not a thing - you're either tethering or using the phone as a hotspot.

ah my bad. I didn't realize that they had two different names. Same idea, however.

seth wrote:

extremely slowly. I had to remove all the big packages that were set to update
So you ran a partial update?

correct.

seth wrote:

Connecting over ethernet works perfectly fine, with none of the above issues.
???

What's the confusion? It means exactly what I said. I have no network connection issues when connecting over ethernet. Only wireless has issues.

seth · 2022-03-20 07:11:33

The confusion is that you went through the troubles of an hourlong updateand your conclusion was to make it a partial one (see the stickes…) while there was a perfectly fine wired connection readily available.

W/ https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=274997 and https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=274985 and everyone here it's pretty much clearly a regression in the ath9k module in linux-5.16.15.

Last edited by seth (2022-03-20 07:11:42)

Muflone · 2022-03-23 18:50:27

even if the hardware is different, I think this might be relevant

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/74187

K4LCIFER · 2022-03-28 22:26:19

I want to update this thread by stating that the problem is now solved. The issue was indeed that my wireless card is dead. I replaced it with a new one and everything works perfectly as expected now.

seth · 2022-03-29 06:40:15

So your wifi physically broke the same moment when a regression in the ath9k module broke it for pretty much everyone under the sun?
I guess there's a non-zero chance for that, but did you actually try a kernel downgrade?

Arch Linux

#1 2022-03-19 03:49:53

Is my network card dead?

#2 2022-03-19 07:03:49

Re: Is my network card dead?

#3 2022-03-19 19:45:22

Re: Is my network card dead?

#4 2022-03-19 20:13:18

Re: Is my network card dead?

#5 2022-03-19 20:40:44

Re: Is my network card dead?

#6 2022-03-19 21:15:36

Re: Is my network card dead?

#7 2022-03-19 23:34:47

Re: Is my network card dead?

#8 2022-03-20 07:11:33

Re: Is my network card dead?

#9 2022-03-23 18:50:27

Re: Is my network card dead?

#10 2022-03-28 22:26:19

Re: Is my network card dead?

#11 2022-03-29 06:40:15

Re: Is my network card dead?

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