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My wifi goes in and out on Ubuntu; I do not have this issue in OSX Yosemite (dual-boot). There is no message saying that it disconnected from the router. Sometimes it will just hang and other times it will say it cannot find the page or I am not connected to the internet in chrome (this takes 10-30 seconds when it happens, and happens every 5-10 minutes). After this it loads the page fine. Here is my wifi info (pastebin link below), any help is greatly appreciated.

wifi: http://pastebin.com/RyFuXNFR

lsmod: http://pastebin.com/jemU7fGt

Thanks in advance for any help!

edit: updated pastebin link after making changes suggested by chili555 edit: updated pastebin again to reflect recent changes - also added lsmod pastebin

CitizenKern
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4 Answers4

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Have you tried changing wifi channel on your router? I admit if the OSX system is stable & the Ubuntu one is not, then it's less likely to be a channel interference problem. But I recently had similar symptoms where my wifi started to drop out/recover/drop out/etc. This was after it had been stable for years. Changing the wifi channel fixed the issue for me. Channels 1, 6, 11 are apparently the best to try.

paj987
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  • I appreciate the answer. I have tried that and the issue is still occurring. I have tried running two macbooks concurrently (mine running Ubuntu and my gf's with OSX, then mine on OSX and hers on OSX) to see if they both have the same issue and it is just on my side. I appreciate you taking the time to answer! – CitizenKern Feb 22 '15 at 00:43
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This: Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers suggests that you have the incorrect driver for your device. Please get a temporary internet connection by whatever means, open a terminal and do:

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

Reboot and your wireless should be working as expected.

I notice this in your wireless_script:

Channel occupancy:

  1   APs on   Frequency:2.417 GHz (Channel 2)
  1   APs on   Frequency:2.432 GHz (Channel 5)
  20   APs on   Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
  4   APs on   Frequency:2.442 GHz (Channel 7)
  1   APs on   Frequency:2.452 GHz (Channel 9)
  5   APs on   Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)

Your access point is one of the 20 (!!) on channel 6. I suggest you change the router to channel 1 to avoid the interference.

Community
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chili555
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  • So far so good! Thank you so much for the information. I also appreciate the link, that is very helpful! – CitizenKern Feb 22 '15 at 05:20
  • Scratch that, it is still happening. I will have connectivity and then all of a sudden i will get the slow spinning circle in chrome for 10-30 seconds. sometimes it will say I'm not connected to the internet and sometimes it will catch and load the page. Please let me know if I can provide any additional information. Thanks! – CitizenKern Feb 22 '15 at 06:06
  • Please see my edit above. – chili555 Feb 22 '15 at 13:47
  • I switched my channel to 1 and there were 23 on that after I switched so I switched back to auto. After your suggestion I checked again and now I switched to 9. Things are definitely running smoother now. I will update if it starts dropping out again. – CitizenKern Feb 22 '15 at 19:17
  • It is still happening. I am updating the pastebin to show updated info. – CitizenKern Feb 22 '15 at 19:45
  • I would suggest a fixed channel rather than auto. I'd try 9. – chili555 Feb 22 '15 at 20:26
  • That is what I am on. I turned off auto and it has been fixed on 9 – CitizenKern Feb 22 '15 at 20:38
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Try to disable the wifi power manager and see if it helps, it did for me.

sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off

Check to see if it's off or on

iwconfig
Chanito
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Search for rfkill in /var/log/syslog

My RealTek Wi-Fi uses power saving which gets misinterpreted by rfkill as hard blocks, causing NetworkManager to shut it down until it comes out of low power mode, then NetworkManager re-initializes Wi-Fi, which takes appreciable time.

I detected this only because the RealTek driver logs power changes, which could be correlated with rfkill change messages. Wi-Fi works fine when

1) stop network-manager

2) manually start wlan0 using wpa_supplicant and dhclient

or after NetworkManager is completely removed and replaced by Wicd, which ignores rfkill.

blekenbleu
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  • Hello - I checked syslog and found rfkill. I am not sure how to do the other steps in your answer though. I am sort of a noob on ubuntu so a decent amount of this is new to me. How would I go about completing the steps you went through? – CitizenKern Feb 22 '15 at 19:50
  • Did rfkill messages indicate that wlan was switching between blocked and unblocked? The wifi card does not control rfkill; it is indirectly controlled by it. If rfkill is frequently switching, the two choices are to run wifi without NetworkManager or eliminate whatever randomly toggles rfkill. – blekenbleu Feb 22 '15 at 20:04
  • it is saying this <info> rfkill0: found WiFi radio killswitch (at /sys/devices/areallylongnumber) (driver b43) also says <info> WiFi enabled by radio killswitch; enabled by state file

    then lower it will say <info> urfkill disappeared from the bus

     – CitizenKern Feb 22 '15 at 20:13
  • That encourages suspicion of incompatible kernel module rfkill implementations. – blekenbleu Feb 22 '15 at 20:20
  • I have since learned a better way to isolate rfkill issues; in a terminal window, run 'rfkill event', and if entries eventually continue to be appended, then incompatible or otherwise faulty modules are likely. – blekenbleu Feb 25 '15 at 16:58
  • I have been running rfkill event and it hasn't been adding entries - been running it for about a half hour. – CitizenKern Feb 26 '15 at 01:07