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birycole

Member

Registered: 2025-03-31

Posts: 2

Strange wifi speeds (RTL8188ee driver), works fine on Windows 11

Hello, I'm still a bit new to this.

I'm getting incredibly slow internet speeds on Archlinux when connecting through wifi to my home network's router (located in another room).
Strangely enough, wifi works perfectly fine when I connect to my mobile phone's hotspot, and on Windows 11, it works flawlessly, no matter which network I connect to. My system is a dualboot with Archlinux alongside Windows 11.
At first I believe it to be a driver issue, especially when googling my wifi card driver's name (rtl8188ee) yielded posts of people apparently experiencing similar issues. But the fact that it works fine with my mobile hotspot confuses me.
The quality of the connection varies in an unpredictable manner, from sometimes working okay-ish, to dropping to a couple of bytes per second of download speed. Therefore it's been difficult to tell whether anything I try to fix this actually works.

Here's the output of `sudo lspci -v -s 03:00`:

03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188EE Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8197
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 130
	I/O ports at c000 [size=256]
	Memory at df100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, IntMsgNum 0
	Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
	Capabilities: [140] Device Serial Number 00-e0-4c-ff-fe-81-91-01
	Capabilities: [150] Latency Tolerance Reporting
	Kernel driver in use: rtl8188ee
	Kernel modules: rtl8188ee

Here's the output of `iwconfig` when connected to the network in question:

lo        no wireless extensions.
enp2s0    no wireless extensions.
wlp3s0    IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"Sunny"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: E4:9E:12:67:F4:78   
          Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=68/70  Signal level=-42 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:217   Missed beacon:0

My Archlinux installation was done through archinstall - selected the GNOME desktop environment option. I'm using NetworkManager for managing connections, with wpa_supplicant as the backend.

Here's a list of things I've attempted to do to fix my issue.

1. Search for similar posts online. Lots of results of people with the same driver and similar issues, couldn't find a solution for myself.

2. Look online for drivers. Apparently rtl8188ee is already a working driver included in the linux kernels.

3. Find a remplacement driver that could work for 8188ee, found rtl8188ce-linux-driver, but I couldn't get it to compile at all.

4. Attempt to switch from iwd to wpa_supplicant

5. Disable power-saving mode.

The fact that it works perfectly when connecting to the mobile hotspot seems quite important to me. I can't find anything else to do that could help, though.

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by birycole (2025-03-31 01:39:55)

birycole

Member

Registered: 2025-03-31

Posts: 2

Re: Strange wifi speeds (RTL8188ee driver), works fine on Windows 11

Update: Deleting the connections through nm-connection-editor, then reconnecting via the GNOME wifi gui seems to have improved things. However, sometimes, after a reboot, it goes back to being slow or dropping. Doing the nm-connection-editor trick seems to work consistently... strange... Still looking for the proper cause of the issue.
Edit: just rebooted, I still have to manually remove the connection through nm-connection-editor, then connect back

Last edited by birycole (2025-03-31 13:40:28)