Ac1200 wifi getting real slow speeds

English Network/Internet
1

When the computer sits idle overnight, the wifi connection gets real slow and I have to do a ifup. How do I keep from having to reconnect to the wifi access point?

trekjunky@Enterprise:~> speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Comcast Cable (98.250.26.174)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Comcast (Detroit, MI) [44.09 km]: 37.526 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 0.47 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 10.48 Mbit/s
trekjunky@Enterprise:~> speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Comcast Cable (98.250.26.174)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Comcast (Detroit, MI) [44.09 km]: 35.076 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 0.66 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 14.63 Mbit/s


**Enterprise:/home/trekjunky #** ifup wlan0
wlan0           up
**Enterprise:/home/trekjunky #** exit
exit
trekjunky@Enterprise:~> speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Comcast Cable (98.250.26.174)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Comcast (Detroit, MI) [44.09 km]: 18.87 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 226.41 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 23.86 Mbit/s
2

With each of wicked, NetworkManager and systemd-networkd wpa_supplicant would not connect reliably upon resume from sleep. Thus I created the following service:

erlangen:~ # systemctl status test.service 
● test.service - Restart wpa supplicant
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/test.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)
erlangen:~ # cat /etc/systemd/system/test.service
[Unit]
Description=Restart wpa supplicant

[Service]
KillMode=control-group
KillMode=process
ExecStartPre=/bin/echo Restarting wpa supplicant ...
ExecStart=/usr/bin/systemctl restart wpa_supplicant-lan.service

[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target
erlangen:~ #

Link speed is always close to controller speed, currently 297/300 Mbit/s.

3

A few things…
Without running a trace route, you can’t know where the bottleneck is…
You may think that the problem is your machine… maybe yes or no.
You might have just “woken up” your network, when you did your ifup and especially assuming you are configured as a DHCP client, your machine would have sent “beacons” which might have activated other network equipment.
ISPs have been known to modify their QoS at night, slowing down inactive connections (so they can allocate more resources to active connections which would like to have full access to the pipe).
Keep in mind also that as a CATV user, your data network is on a shared loop which means that the Provider manages a number of you sharing the same bandwidth.

TSU

4

Thank you gentleman/ladies. I just have to ifup wlan0 every day… such an annoyance! I never had this trouble before. I don’t know if it is the power saver settings on the wifi card, or if it is the ISP’s router rebooting every night…

How do I permanently disable power saver on the card. I check with iwconfig and it is on. Also, is there a command line monitor that when it sees the connection drop, to run the ifup command until it is back up? Or is my only choice to abandon wicked and use Network Manager?

5

I have created a cron job that runs an hour before I usually get up. It does an ifup wlan0 and I should be good to go when I get up. It won’t work in very specific conditions, so I should be safe from those conditions happening at the same time for quite a while.