Glacial WiFi speeds in openSUSE 12.2 (unusably slow)

English Network/Internet
1

Speeds are normal connecting with Ethernet or Mobile Broadband. Wifi speeds hover around 14k, with about an average of 18% packet loss. These speeds make it unusable, and are getting in the way of important work.

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01)

Linux linux-icu6.site 3.4.6-2.10-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Jul 26 09:36:26 UTC 2012 (641c197) i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Worked flawlessly before I upgraded via dup.

2

Can we assume you are using b43?
What about wired connection, is it slow too?

3

Ethernet is normal speed as is Mobile Broadband. I’m using the FOSS brcmsmac driver. I just tried disabling ipv6, since somewhere else suggested it. No ecfe

4

I’m not aware of any issue but @lwfinger may be.

I guess my first stop would be to look at refreshing the firmware

5

How would I go about refreshing the firmware? iI frankly suspeced a change in the kernel or firmware. t

6

Hi
I have the same device and using the same driver. Did you blacklist
b43 from loading? Most of the time it’s at 144Mb/s (5Ghz) but does
drift around but my download speeds always reaches my max DSL speed.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.6-2.10-desktop
up 2 days 14:04, 3 users, load average: 0.04, 0.06, 0.05
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU

7

See if Malcolm’s advice works first
You can add a b43 blacklist to: /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf
Just add a line:
blacklist b43
save and reboot

8

I’ve blacklisted the driver. A lsmod showed it, so I think it was loading. iI ca’t test yet to see that it worked.

9

Although I don’t suspect as a likely primary cause of your problem,

If you’re experiencing dropped packet issues due to interference/congestion or special use,

My paper here should vastly improve your throughput

https://sites.google.com/site/4techsecrets/optimize-and-fix-your-network-connection

HTH,
TSU

10

All fixed after blacklisting b43. I could have sworn it was blacklisted before, I guess the DUP removed that config file. Can anybody explain precisely why it worked the way it did… how was it able to load two conflicting drivers?

11

On 09/28/2012 03:26 PM, Shadowolf7 wrote:
>
> All fixed after blacklisting b43. I could have sworn it was blacklisted
> before, I guess the DUP removed that config file. Can anybody explain
> precisely why it worked the way it did… how was it able to load two
> conflicting drivers?

There are two drivers that work on the device. They are not conflicting;
however, you can drive the device with either b43 or brcmsmac. Whichever one
gets loaded first will lock out the other. By blacklisting b43, you ensure that
brcmsmac is the one that is used.

12

I saw this thread yesterday, but didn’t reply since I had no solution.

Then I thought about it last night and this morning, when I discovered that I was having the same problem with my laptop. It was puzzling, because it had previously been fine.

I checked the router, and adjusted the antenna position on the router - it had apparently been bumped. That fixed the problem.

My point: consider whether there are possible problems that are in the WiFi network rather than in your computer.