High ping bug with Qualcomm AR9462

[Shadowhunter123]

Hello everybody,

I have a laptop with a built in Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 wireless network adapter. I am running Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon (Kernel 4.15.0-45-generic). For quite some time now I experience an odd behaviour with my wireless adapter, which is connecting my notebook via a FritzBox 7430 router to the internet. The distance to the router is quite large, however I manage to have a stable 2-4ms ping connection to the router at most times with a signal strength at about 50%.
The problem:
From time to time, the ping time to the router is rising suddenly from 2-4ms up to several seconds. Watching videos on YouTube and stuff becomes unbearable with this loss-of-connection-like ping times. The WLAN functionality of my router is fine however, because I can browse the web with my smartphone without issues at the same time.
Sometimes the pings are stabilizing after few minutes and I can continue watching videos, sometimes there is a connection timeout and it says 'Destination unreachable' on my terminal (after running ping).
However the oddiest thing here is that if I am in a situation with irregularly high ping and I go ahead and place my notebook directly besides my router in the next room, I get a signal strength of over 95%, as you would expect... but my notebook is unable to receive pings from my router, I am still getting ping timeouts or have a ping of several hundreds of milliseconds or even seconds, while the distance to my router is less than 30cm. If I then deactivate WLAN, and reactivate it again, it connects to the router and ping is perfect.
Right now I have the problem that I have a stable ping of <10ms on idle, however if I load up YouTube or Netflix or start a software download or anything, ping rises to several seconds. So it seems that there are some kind of bandwidth problems with my WLAN adapter or something? But I never heard of that before, so I have no clue.

However it seems clear to me that something must be wrong with my Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 wireless network adapter. I am no uber-pro in Linux and only know the most basic stuff. Do you have any idea as to how I could try to fix these ping irregularities?



In conclusion, I want to show you how a typical 'ping' looks like on my end.
First loss of connection after 47s.
Reestablishing connection at 102s.
Second loss of connection at 106s.
After that, I placed the notebook directly besides my router. No connection can be established.
After waiting for a minute or so I deactivate and reactivate WLAN, it says Network unreachable at first.
Regained connection after 313s.



PING 192.168.178.1 (192.168.178.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2.60 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.91 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=470 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=435 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=240 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=645 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=439 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=648 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=141 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=2.91 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=152 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=2.38 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=19.3 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=2.30 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=2.30 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=2.58 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=64 time=58.9 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=18 ttl=64 time=504 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=19 ttl=64 time=346 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=20 ttl=64 time=545 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=64 time=264 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=1406 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=23 ttl=64 time=636 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=24 ttl=64 time=359 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=25 ttl=64 time=322 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=26 ttl=64 time=284 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=27 ttl=64 time=451 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=28 ttl=64 time=423 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=29 ttl=64 time=384 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=30 ttl=64 time=1188 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=31 ttl=64 time=1859 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=32 ttl=64 time=857 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=33 ttl=64 time=245 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=34 ttl=64 time=222 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=35 ttl=64 time=1146 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=37 ttl=64 time=1203 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=38 ttl=64 time=328 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=39 ttl=64 time=294 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=40 ttl=64 time=503 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=41 ttl=64 time=580 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=42 ttl=64 time=216 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=43 ttl=64 time=432 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=44 ttl=64 time=637 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=45 ttl=64 time=604 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=46 ttl=64 time=1063 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=47 ttl=64 time=45.5 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=102 ttl=64 time=1610 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=103 ttl=64 time=586 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=104 ttl=64 time=566 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=105 ttl=64 time=287 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=106 ttl=64 time=248 ms
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Network is unreachable
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=313 ttl=64 time=2.24 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=314 ttl=64 time=3.22 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=315 ttl=64 time=2.12 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=316 ttl=64 time=10.5 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=317 ttl=64 time=2.06 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=318 ttl=64 time=1.93 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=319 ttl=64 time=2.31 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=320 ttl=64 time=2.09 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=321 ttl=64 time=1.85 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=322 ttl=64 time=1.92 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.1: icmp_seq=323 ttl=64 time=2.25 ms
^C
--- 192.168.178.1 ping statistics ---
323 packets transmitted, 62 received, 80% packet loss, time 328257ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.850/386.481/1859.573/422.395 ms, pipe 2