Wi-fi disappearing 16.04 randomly

Question

Wi-fi connectivity randomly disappears on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and restores after restart.

When it's gone, Wireless is enabled, but offers no networks, and the hidden wi-fi finds my connection, but won't connect to it.

Enable/disable doesn't do the trick.

EDIT: Actually, the re-enabling works, but the icon doesn't change and the window is actually as if it was disabled. But it works, I'm online. Unity bug?

Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 3160 (rev 93)
    Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless AC 3160
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 54
    Memory at d1100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
    Kernel modules: iwlwifi

 description: Wireless interface
       product: Wireless 3160
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wlp3s0
       version: 93
       serial: b4:6d:83:e4:ce:8d
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=4.4.0-21-generic firmware=16.242414.0 ip=192.168.0.10 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
       resources: irq:54 memory:d1100000-d1101fff

It might be related to the additional drive, but I can't tell if it's the wireless chipset:

I'm using rt2800usb and have a similar problem; and I never use suspend. wavemon says 100% and -32 dBm, and even with FileZilla copying it might just stop working. Here is my Q with a good A on the subject: https://askubuntu.com/questions/938321/how-to-make-a-marginal-wifi-connection-automatically-reconnect-if-it-drops-ub — SDsolar, Aug 01 '17 at 00:48

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

I am also using Intel Wireless 3160 with Ubuntu 16.04.

Intel CPU microcode updates are not meant to affect the wireless device. It will improve and fix issues with processing behavior, and is recommended.

This problem is usually replicated after resuming from sleep/suspend. OK. First things first. Add SUSPEND_MODULES="iwlwifi" to the empty file /etc/pm/config.d/config. You can use nano: sudo nano /etc/pm/config.d/config. This has prevented loss of connection after resuming. Thanks to this thread.

Next, edit/create the file /etc/systemd/system/wifi-resume.service to add the following script (couldn't paste it here). Thanks to Joakim Koed. Save the file. Now run sudo systemctl enable wifi-resume.service to activate the service.

This will automate the sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service and display the correct wireless state after sleep/suspend, also showing available connections. During my tests, I was even able to switch connections without issues.

EDIT: Although it is now less frequent, wireless connection is still being affected by this issue.

Wi-fi disappearing 16.04 randomly

1 Answers1