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I have a baffling issue on a relatively fresh install of ubuntu 22.04. I noticed today that the internet was very slow on my laptop, but not on my phone or other laptops in the apartment. After some investigating, I noticed that any time the network connection went down, I had a process called kworker/28:2+events using 100% CPU when I ran top.

After checking /var/log/kern.log, I noticed that there was a message in there every time the kworker process popped up:

... ieee80211 phy0: Hardware restart was requested

This seems to happen every time I try to make any kind of connection. Further more, and somewhat unexpectedly, whenever I run a sudo command while the kworker process is active, the sudo command hangs until the kworker process finishes.

My understanding is that these kinds of issues generally relate to the kernel and some kind of bug within it. I notice on my software updater that there are kernel updates available, so I obviously want to try to get those updates, but... when I try to do that, I get hit with the hardware reset issue.

I am desparate to get this fixed as soon as possible, but I have no idea where to go from here. Any ideas?

wvn
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    /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf "options iwlwifi wd_disable=0 bt_coex_active – sleepyhead Mar 12 '24 at 13:30
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    What WiFi card do you have. the kernel uses a module for the network interface, there is your actual problem. Use dmesg to see the kernel messages related to your interface. Probably some setting is required like the wd_disable to disable or enable the queue watchdog, or disable Bluetooth coexistence or disable wifi-802.11n if you are not using the older WiFi standards. Most WiFi is now AC or AX. Using a mixed network slows things down for all devices. – sleepyhead Mar 12 '24 at 13:36
  • @sleepyhead The output of lspci - grep -i network gives me 0000:6d:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device 272b (rev 1a). I am not familiar with dmesg so will look into that, otherwise I have tried setting wd_disable=0 as well as 11n_disable=1 to no avail. I am also not very familiar with networking in general so might need some more details. I will play around with the bt_coex_active option as well but not entirely sure how to toggle it. Thanks! – wvn Mar 12 '24 at 13:54
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    To clarify, you have an Intel AX210, it needs to connect to your wifi access point through B,A,G,N,AC or AX a mixed network works but may make things slow, if you don't need older wifi standards, disable them on the card and on your accesspoint. The Intel is relatively new and having all the updates installed will help, but also the Intel wifi driver module iwlwifi may need tweaking. The command dmesg prints out the kernel messages, it's similar to looking at the kern.log. Good luck – sleepyhead Mar 12 '24 at 14:55
  • @sleepyhead it appears that a combiation of 11n_disable=1 and updating my kernel worked for me. If you want to post your comment as an answer I will mark it as solved, thanks! – wvn Mar 12 '24 at 15:01

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The Intel AX210 Wireless card is relatively new, in late 2020. The driver kernel modules have been improved the last years. The kernel module that provides Intel wireless networking is named iwlwifi. There are some options that can be set for this module that can change it's behavior. You can disable bluetooth, which uses the same 2.4Ghz, but hardly interfers with Wifi. Or disable the watchdog that monitors the transmission queues.

The Intel AX210 is a Wifi 6E capable module that supports 802.11AX and can use the faster 6Ghz if your accesspoint supports it. An access point can run multiple wifi standards for backwards compatibility. This however can also make networks unstable and disabling the older protocols like G and N can help make the network more stable on the 2.4Ghz frequencies.

Great to hear that the kernel update and disabling of 11n helped, you did well!

sleepyhead
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