Unstable Wifi Connection

[DissidentRage]

Every six months or so I try again to install Linux to one of my home machines. Every time, there's some insurmountable problem that I fiddle with for a week or so before giving up and uninstalling. This time, I'm throwing in the towel on useless Google searches and posting here.

My issue is that it seems to run well for about 20 seconds, especially after freshly reconnecting. After those 20 seconds are up, it ceases all incoming and outgoing network activity for about two minutes.

This is a fresh install, so there's no chance that something tampered with it to cause any instability. I'm running LMDE Betsy with Cinnamon (downloaded from the site a couple days ago) using the 3.16.0-4-amd64 kernel (now updated to 4.1.0-2-amd64). My wifi card is a TP-Link TL-WN951N v1 (chipset: AR5416). I'm using a 2.4 GHz 802.11g/n connection with WPA2-AES security.

Here are the details from mintwifi. There was a warning about /etc/resolv.conf not being symlinked to /etc/resolvconf/run/resolv.conf so I deleted the former and symlinked it to the latter.

Code: Select all

-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
  -- Qualcomm Atheros AR5416 Wireless Network Adapter [AR5008 802.11(a)bgn] (rev 01)
      ==> PCI ID = 168c:0023 (rev 01)
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"wowsuchwifi"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 90:0D:CB:FF:F1:A0   
          Bit Rate=130 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-36 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:1  Invalid misc:26   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 50:e5:49:c7:f0:88  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:3857 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3857 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:338937 (330.9 KiB)  TX bytes:338937 (330.9 KiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 90:f6:52:36:37:40  
          inet addr:10.0.0.7  Bcast:10.0.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:78583 errors:0 dropped:444 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:53622 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:77504584 (73.9 MiB)  TX bytes:6780983 (6.4 MiB)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
Reloading /etc/samba/smb.conf: smbd.
RTNETLINK answers: File exists
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
Server:		75.75.75.75
Address:	75.75.75.75#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	google.com
Address: 216.58.217.142

Stuff I've done so far:

• Checked various files in /var/log to see if anything fishy came up
• Disabled IPv6 since apparently support for it isn't up to snuff yet
  • I should mention that changing this in both Network Manager and /etc/sysctl.conf has absolutely no effect
• Given it a static IP address (both on the machine and in the router, for posterity)
• Set the DNS to 8.8.8.8 with mixed results (sometimes I would get 404s, and it still didn't help with the delays, so I rolled it back to auto)
• Disabled the security (router wouldn't let me use a lesser protocol like WEP); enabled when it didn't help with the delays
• Ensured that ath9k drivers are enabled
• Changed the security protocol exclusively to WPA2-AES
• Updated the kernel to 4.1.0-2-amd64
• Added US to /etc/default/crda
• ???
• PROFIT!!

So far, no dice. The connection doesn't "drop" exactly, it just makes my machine look really lazy by keeping a 0b/s "speed" both in and out.

So, I'm stuck and I really don't want to have to uninstall it again. What do?

[Pierre]

do you have the same drop-out issue when using the live_disk / environment?.

[DissidentRage]

In hindsight I believe it did, but I minimized the issue after my roommate mentioned having connection problems. After installing the OS, I rebooted the router. Whatever vague issues existed for other devices has since cleared, but for this device (particularly when booted to Linux) the issue above persists. When booted to the Windows disk, all is well.

[DissidentRage]

I'm logged in from the live disc. I'm having no issues with the wireless connection. It feels much more responsive than it does when I'm logged into the installed instance.

[Pjotr]

Try this:
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... eless-card
(items 2.1 and 2.2, right column)

[DissidentRage]

After I logged back in earlier, it seemed to run fine for about 10 minutes. Then it started up again, so I reconnected and tried your suggestions here. The power management option didn't go through as apparently it's not supported by my card anyway. The latter went through, and the moment I logged back in from the reboot the connection actually didn't work, so I had to reconnect. I am again getting connection problems, and when it does work my speed is 1/10th of the bandwidth I'm supposed to be getting from my ISP.

[Pjotr]

Rather a long shot, but do you have better results with (a live session of) the main Mint 17.2 edition (not LMDE)?

[DissidentRage]

I've already considered that, but there are Reasons I'm using LMDE instead of the mainline distribution. If I can't get this to work by EOD I'm probably not going to try installing Linux again.