Updates for RTL8188EE

[noblow91]

Hey guys! It's me again

I've got a little tired of everything I tried not getting much better results for the rtl8188ee wifi driver. So I decided to google some of my more peculiar dmesg errors. Turns out that a few people over in the fedora forums have found part of the problem. A lot of newer routers have a feature that automatically changes the channel it uses when it detects another router nearby using the same channel. Linux was never programmed to handle such an event. Anyway, those same people are actively trying to patch the 4.4 kernel series to better suit the channel hopping abilities of these newer routers. If anyone doesnt feel like waiting for a completely stable version (or you dont feel the need to update your kernel) then login to the admin console of your router and disable the automatic channel detection/switching/hopping/what-have-you.

My rtl8188ee's bit rate has not fallen below 150mb/s since I turned the channel hopping option off. No reboots. No network loss. I still get bandwidth change errors in my dmesg log, but I assume thats because a G device connected to an N network. Anyway, thats all I have for now. BYE!!!

[noblow91]

Just a minor update, but it's been a few days since I switched to a fixed channel and, finally, after 2 days and 16 hours (according to uptime command) I had lost my network access with network-manager saying I was still connected. So I decided to run iwconfig and found out that I was not associated with an AP at all. According to dmesg the AP got turned off. I know this wasn't the case, but it is what happened. I don't believe that I'm still using the rtlwifi_new drivers. I know I have the 4.4 and 4.10 kernels installed right now, but I failed to see which one was being loaded at boot time. Using uname -r I have determined that I'm currently running the 4.10 kernel, which, to my knowledge, is still having a few issues with rtl8188ee. I'll reboot in a little while and load up the 4.4 kernel. The latest version should, theoretically, contain a patch applicable to this wifi card and I should be able to allow channel hopping on my router again, although I'm not going to. I have the only fixed channel in my neighborhood which means no other household in range will be using the same frequency as me which should significantly help cut down on interference and allow me to get more accurate results while trying to test things.

Anyway, I will post again by the end of the day with another update.

P.S.
Even tho I'm using the 4.10 kernel, my bit rate has not once dropped below 150mb/s until I completely lost connectivity earlier. All it took to get my wifi back was restarting both the network-manager and networking services. I'm not sure why I have to restart both, network-manager seems to restart either my card or my computers control of my card and my internet access, itself, doesn't come back until i restart networking. I'm currently preparing to write and single line script to do both and alias it...unless I can create an alias that runs both commands. I havent tried that yet, but I'm about to find out. Will post results in my next update.

[JeremyB]

Check

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dkms status

See if rtlwifi_new is in the results, if not you would have to recompile the modules for the 4.10 kernel manually

[noblow91]

Im very thankful for the community. Learn something new every day. I do not have them installed anymore. Which means that rtl8188ee is running pretty well off the current 4.10 support. With that said, I'm still about to reboot and test out the latest 4.4 kernel. Just got an even newer update just a few minutes ago. I'm aware that changing the kernel requires the rtlwifi_new drivers to be recompiled. I just started changing my kernel again today. I guess I forgot to recompile after my last kernel update tho. Can't complain too much about it. Im not at a point where a full reboot is required to regain internet access. Being able to run one or two commands, although slightly inconvenient, isn't as much of an annoyance as having to reboot entirely.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know about the dkms command. It will definitely prove useful later. If you can't tell from my posts so far, I'm a bit of a bug-hunter with a tendency to try to find usable workarounds when neccesary.

[noblow91]

Strangely enough, I went to reboot after installing the 4.4.0-92-generic kernel and it wasn't listed as a grub menuentry. So I edited one of my 4.10 entries to try and get it to load my 4.4 kernel and my computer told me it couldn't find it or the initial ramdisk. So, instead, I booted up the kernel I believe I started with on here which is 4.8.0-53-generic. Although I have performed an apt-get autoremove at one point, so my original kernel is probably gone by now. I didn't have a single problem with it...actually, someone here probably knows, but which kernel came packaged with the 18.2 live disk?

[JeremyB]

I think LM18.2 did have the 4.8.0-53 kernel and the 4.8 kernels are no longer supported. I would install the newest 4.4.0 kernel and stick with them as they are the LTS kernel for LM18

[noblow91]

Well...just got all my 4.4 related stuff installed for sure this time. Plus I pulled my web history so I could find the page I was looking at the other day that started this thread in the first place. It was a bugzilla report on redhat's website from 4 years ago for the 3.9.9 kernel...which is definitely quite a bit dated by now...although, I do find it kind of strange that the same bugs have been affecting this particular wifi card for all these years and its still not had a fully working viable solution...even with the rtlwifi_new drivers I still had issues with my bit rate dropping to 72.2mb/s. So, I guess I found my new pet project. Ive seen several workarounds so far and have actually used something similar to one, myself before I started digging around for info. But, I'm also a bit stubborn. Although, I do appreciate an easy solution, I wouldn't be able to say I solved my problem if I just tossed it out the window in favor of something else. Fortunately tho, setting the fixed channel seems to have fixed the majority of my issue, so I just need to figure out how to solve the occasional network drop issue on the rtl8188ee specifically or hope that a future kernel release has been patched to better handle communications with it.

I've got the feeling that I'll be learning a lot more about linux than I originally thought possible. Been a linux user for going on 12 years now and I've still barely scratched the surface of all the things its capable of. With proper backing, it could easily beat out anything microsoft could ever put out and without steve jobs, I'm going to have to say apple as well. Google definitely got a pretty strong foot through the door with chromeos and android even tho neither are technically true linux, but its a good start and really put a linux kernel on more devices than i thought would ever see linux and in such a short amount of time...but i digress. this is getting completely off topic. i just made a few realizations that left me in utter awe for a moment...

[JeremyB]

Check

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grep [[:alnum:]] /sys/module/rtl8188ee/parameters/*

See if fwlps and ips = Y as that will mean power management is enabled and that usually causes problems with these modules

[noblow91]

nope. the only thing enabled there is "msi".

just a question, but why not use iwconfig to determine the power save state? not complaining about regex or learning about other ways of getting info. im just curious.

[JeremyB]

It doesn't seem to matter what iwconfig reports sometimes when the realtek wifi chips are involved. Sometimes we even have to make sure that Network Manager isn' trying to enable power management. Some other things are covered by chili555's post https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php ... st13614520

[noblow91]

Unfortunately, I am unable to change the router to a full b/g/n mode. nor can i adjust the password from the wpa/wpa2 mixed. adding b support, in my opinion, would reduce network speed to unacceptable levels and removing wpa in favor of strict wpa2 would require reconfiguring several devices that i dont own. but ive done everything else.

[JeremyB]

Unfortunately, I am unable to change the router to a full b/g/n mode. nor can i adjust the password from the wpa/wpa2 mixed. adding b support, in my opinion, would reduce network speed to unacceptable levels and removing wpa in favor of strict wpa2 would require reconfiguring several devices that i dont own. but ive done everything else.

I don't think the b/g/n mode is a big deal but I have no issues with any of my devices from switching mixed mode encryption to WPA2 only as long as I don't touch the password. You can check the encryption with

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iwlist scan | egrep -i 'ssid|cipher'

I have the best luck with linux if TKIP is not listed

My results are

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                    ESSID:"DWR-922-42C1"
                        Group Cipher : CCMP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP

[noblow91]

What I meant by reconfiguring is my household has a few wifi enabled devices that are old enough to not know what wpa2 is. Personally, I wouldn't mind switching entirely to wpa2, but Im trying to keep them in mind as well. With that said, I just left my laptop for 6 hours and when I came back I was experiencing repeated network drops while using the 4.4 kernel, so I switched back to the 4.8 for now. I can live with the lack of support until I can get something figured out for either 4.4 or 4.10. Then again, I could always get a second router and use one of them to connect the older, no-longer-supported devices and the other for the newer ones, which would allow for further testing. But that will take me a little while.

[noblow91]

I've just been informed that we are changing ISPs in the next few days, which inspired me to look into the average data speeds for my area. Apparently, Comcast and U-verse have the lowest speeds around here. I initially thought that my wifi card might be an issue, but seeing as how my internet speed has been consistently dropping and even my landlord, who has windows and apple devices, has been complaining about how slow the internet is, it seems to me that it very well could be Comcast to blame for the speed. I did go back to the 4.8 kernel for the time being, but I'm now experiencing network drop issues with it as well, which never used to happen. I'm starting to think that either the router itself or maybe the fact that I've left the password in mixed mode is to blame. So, before we end our Comcast connection entirely, I think I'll try a strict WPA2 test just to make sure. The older devices can suffer a day without wifi. Its not as if we don't have newer stuff that can perform the same functions anyway. Still...it would be nice to figure out what makes this card work so great under windows, but not so great on linux...

You wouldn't happen to know of any diagnostic tools I could run on, say, bartPE that I could figure that out with would you? I'd rather not have to reinstall windows entirely.

[JeremyB]

You could look at the wireless script link in my signature and post results. The best diagnostic tool I know of for Linux wireless problems are people.
The wireless works better in windows because of money and there are more computers sold with Windows than any other and if the wireless performance was bad in Windows there would be a lot of complaints. My Lenovo doesn't have the greatest antenna on it and if I use my USB wifi with antenna the signal strength is 2x of what the internal adapter reports and I have a Toshiba laptop that can pick up my neighbors wifi at close to 400 yards away

[Timbot2000]

Hi JeremyB, gotta minute to help a brother out?
Having issue with same card on 18.2 Kernel 4.10,

Initial download speeds at boot or immediately after network-manager restart are in the 30-40 Mbps range, but after a while download speeds drop to 3-5 Mbps. Is there some sort of buffer maintained by the driver or what? Currently using the latest driver rtl8188ce-linux-driver maintained by FreedomBen at Github.

I also ran your script and it is attached below

Thank you for your help

[JeremyB]

Hi JeremyB, gotta minute to help a brother out?
Having issue with same card on 18.2 Kernel 4.10,

Initial download speeds at boot or immediately after network-manager restart are in the 30-40 Mbps range, but after a while download speeds drop to 3-5 Mbps. Is there some sort of buffer maintained by the driver or what? Currently using the latest driver rtl8188ce-linux-driver maintained by FreedomBen at Github.

I also ran your script and it is attached below

Thank you for your help

I would disable IPv6 in Network Manager and move your wifi router to channel 9 as there are 23 different AP's on channel 6

[Timbot2000]

Thanks Jeremy! I'll monitor the performance and see if its consistently better (here's hoping)

Btw, what is the reason for disabling IPv6 in your estimation? (If I may ask)

[JeremyB]

IPv6 can cause issues at times