Internet connection drops until I turn my laptop WiFi connection off and on

Question

I am running Ubuntu 20.04 (but I have also had this problem with 18.04) on a Dell XPS laptop:

Very often, I seem to be disconnected from my home internet, as if the WiFi has dropped. But there is no problem with my WiFi and if I turn off the connection (on my laptop) and back on, the internet works fine again.

Does anyone have any ideas?

This thread seems to have had a similar problem, but there is no clear answer.

Here is the output of sudo dmesg | grep wlp0s2:

https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/sjDRHNVsnv/

It might help to look through logs on both your laptop and on the router to try to figure out why the connection was dropped. — user10489, Jan 15 '22 at 14:54
Thank you. Do I need to run these logs when the WiFi has dropped? — user1551817, Jan 15 '22 at 15:01
You don't run logs, you look at them. The logs are nearly always being recorded. — user10489, Jan 15 '22 at 15:04
Okay so I can post these logs after the WiFi has dropped next time. — user1551817, Jan 15 '22 at 15:07
Yes, you can post them. Find out your interface with: iwconfig It will be wlx... or wlp... or wlo...something. Then check: sudo dmesg | grep wlp3s0 or whatever you found. As the result may be lengthy, paste the result here and give us the link: http://paste.ubuntu.com — chili555, Jan 15 '22 at 15:18
I will do that next time it drops. Thank you for the details directions! — user1551817, Jan 15 '22 at 16:55
Okay I have posted the output above in my question. Thank you! — user1551817, Jan 15 '22 at 17:39

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 15 '22 at 21:13

In your paste, we see that your wireless device is roaming, connecting, losing, reconnecting from as many as six wireless access points. I suspect that the first two are 2.4 gHz and 5 gHz segments of your own router.

We also see many repeats of this:

Connection to AP xx:35:d1:28:33:xx lost

That suggests that either the channel or the encryption method has suddenly changed.

I highly recommend that you address the settings in your router: wifi stops working after sometime while being connected in ubuntu 18.04

I believe that your wireless device is very capable of connection to 5 gHz only.

I called my 2.4 and 5 GHz segments different names and now when I connect to the 2.4 GHz network it seems to be stable. Thank you! — user1551817, Feb 10 '22 at 20:03

Internet connection drops until I turn my laptop WiFi connection off and on

1 Answers1