Bad Wifi reception

Question

For some reason I got a really bad wifi reception in my bedroom under ubuntu. Under windows everything is fine. My tablet and my phone don't have problems either. By bad reception I mean that I have to put my laptop in specific area to have a connection and I often need to move because I lost the connection...

Can't figure out why.

~# lshw -C net
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: Centrino Advanced-N 6235
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 24
       serial: c4:85:08:b1:24:84
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.11.0-17-generic firmware=18.168.6.1 ip=192.168.2.12 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
       resources: irq:48 memory:d2600000-d2601fff

# iwconfig 
eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:"hotixiaspot"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.452 GHz  Access Point: EC:1A:59:04:70:BC   
          Bit Rate=57.8 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=44/70  Signal level=-66 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:23426  Invalid misc:1524   Missed beacon:0

Please give some examples on what the signal level is in dBm at identical spots with Ubuntu/Windows — pzkpfw, Mar 05 '14 at 14:46

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '14 at 15:29

2

You may find, as I did with a very similar iwlwifi device, that signal strength and stability are greatly improved if you set the router to restrict channel width to 20 MHz only and not 20/40 MHz. enter image description here

answered Mar 05 '14 at 15:29

chili555

60,188

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

This may have its causes in the drivers. You may have a look at this answer to a similar question on SE Unix&Linux.

If available, you should install a manufacturer driver for your WiFi card. From your lshw stuff I assume Ubuntu doesn't exactly know what the device is, so it uses a (more or less) working generic driver.

Some companies supply Linux drivers (like Realtek does for my card), some don't. So you could try your luck this way.

Another possibility would be to disable ACPI power management for your Wifi card. Have a look at this AU question. Before doing this, check whether your card is managed by ACPI at all: iwconfig gives you information about wireless devices. There's a line saying Power Management:.... If it says On, try the method in the link, if not, it won't have an effect.

As you can see in my lshw Ubuntu actually knows excatly which card I am using and is using the official driver of Intel, the latest one. In my iwconfig you can also see that the power management is off. Thanks for your help anyway. — tibo, Mar 07 '14 at 00:35

Bad Wifi reception

2 Answers2