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I'm using Ubuntu 14.04LTS on a Dell inspiron 14 (3421). My WiFi signal fluctuates and disconnects whenever I'm more than 2 feet away from my router. On windows, it works fine. I've tried updating my drivers and I've tried disabling power management in iwconfig. It's still not reliable and I do face the same problem from time to time. Does any one have any suggestions on how to fix this?

Here's the output of lspci -knn | grep Net -A2

06:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1704 802.11n + BT 4.0 [1028:0016]
Kernel driver in use: wl

Here's the output of iwconfig

eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abg  ESSID:"xxxxxx"  
      Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: FC:0A:81:89:01:70   
      Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
      Power Management:off
cybergla
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  • Please [edit] your question and add output of lspci -knn | grep Net -A2 – Pilot6 Sep 18 '15 at 11:34
  • I am afraid there is no fix. The only driver that can be used is the Broadcom closed source driver. It is installed already. – Pilot6 Sep 18 '15 at 13:05
  • I was afraid of that :( I have recently ordered an external Wifi adapter, to see if that works better. Hopefully someone else has a better solution. – cybergla Sep 18 '15 at 13:12
  • There are no solutions so far. Maybe Broadcom will release a new driver some time. But they did not upgrade it for more than a year. – Pilot6 Sep 18 '15 at 13:13

2 Answers2

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Although this may or may not be a complete fix, I suggest that you check the settings in the router. WPA2-AES is preferred; not any WPA and WPA2 mixed mode and certainly not TKIP. Second, if your router is capable of N speeds, you may have better connectivity with a channel width of 20 MHz in the 2.4 GHz band instead of automatic 20/40 MHz, although it is likely to affect N speeds. I also have better luck with a fixed channel, either 1, 6 or 11, rather than automatic channel selection. Also, be certain the router is not set to use N speeds only; auto B, G and N is preferred. After making these changes, reboot the router.

Next, I recommend that your regulatory domain be set explicitly. Check yours:

sudo iw reg get

If you get 00, that is a one-size-maybe-fits-all setting. Find yours here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 Then set it temporarily:

sudo iw reg set IS

Of course, substitute your country code if not Iceland. Set it permanently:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/crda

Use nano or kate or leafpad if you don't have the text editor gedit.

Change the last line to read:

REGDOMAIN=IS

Proofread carefully, save and close the text editor.

Next, I'd set IPv6 to Ignore in Network Manager: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installation_Guide/images/netconfig/network-connections-ipv6-ignore.png This example is for ethernet, but you want wireless.

chili555
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There's a simple trick to this (maybe it will work for you, worked fine for me). Go to networks in the top pannel and try connecting to your wifi network. During the time its fluctuating go to edit connection and select wifi network you are trying to connect and press Edit

Now a dialog box will open, now you have to go to IPv4 tab under that select manual which is by default set to DHCP. now click on add and enter random ip address, netmask should be 255.255.255.0 and provide gateway like If you have entered your IP - 192.168.73.12 then your default gateway should be - 192.168.73.1

Provide DNS Server like this ----
8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4

check the box - Require IPv4 addressing for this connection to complete

Now click on routes and click on add and provide same IP, Netmask, Gateway that you have entered before. click OK and then Save your setting. Restart your network using terminal commandsudo service network-manager restart and then restart your system. Hope it works for you.

Puneet Soni
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