Hello. I am using Leap 42.2 on a Thinkpad E520. I have ATT UVerse Gigapower (1Gbps) service, but my laptop’s wireless download and upload speeds seem pathetically slow. Typical download is around 27 Mbps and typical upload is around 17 Mbps. I guess this is OK for a 2.4G network, but my router is also broadcasting 5G which the laptop does not seem to see when I scan for networks. As a comparison my Samsung cellphone does see the 5G network and typical download and upload speeds are around 300 Mbps.
Based on the output below from the lappy’s Kinfocenter is its network card (despite its name) incapable of seeing a 5G network and this is the reason for the slow speeds?
I apologized for inadvertently copying and posting the ethernet card info for my laptop rather than the wireless card info. Still nobody has replied to my inquiry.
I would greatly appreciate some sagely advice on my inquiry as to the capabilities of my lappy’s wireless card.
What your wireless hardware is capable of, and what the actual performance may be like are two different things…
Received signal levels and interference/congestion impact on the effective bitrate, and that can take time and effort to ascertain. It might be a good idea to scan for adjacent wireless APs in the vicinity. There are good apps for mobile phones/tablets that can do this.
You can use iwconfig to get a ‘sanpshot’ of the wireless link a a a given time.
/usr/sbin/iwconfig wlan0
To get a better real-time idea of the signal level, bit-rate etc you could run it like this in a terminal window
while true; do sleep 5s; clear; iwconfig; done
and perhaps run a speed test or copy a large file to/from another machine on the network while monitoring the realtime performance of the link.
Dean, thanks. Here is the output of your suggested command.
But please understand that my problem as originally posted is my laptop is not detecting the 5G broadcast from my ATT UVerse modem/router which is supposed to be giving me 1Gb (which I realize is unrealistic). It’s only detecting the 2.4 G broadcast. I can scan all day long and it won’t see the 5G. Thus my original question – is the laptop’s network card incapable of detecting the 5G network and, therefore, I will never get anything better than about the 30-35Mb download and 15-17 Mb upload from the 2.4G broadcast?
My other wireless devices (e.g., Samsung cellphone, Samsung Nook tablet) do see the 5G broadcast and also the 5G broadcast from a Netgear wifi extender – it’s only this laptop that does not see 5G.
So here is the output from your command. Many thanks.
bosdad
lo no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"ATT2HNR64A"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 14:ED:BB:33:62:8A
Bit Rate=65 Mb/s Tx-Power=14 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-31 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:58 Missed beacon:0
eth0 no wireless extensions.
lo no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"ATT2HNR64A"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 14:ED:BB:33:62:8A
Bit Rate=65 Mb/s Tx-Power=14 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-27 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:60 Missed beacon:0
eth0 no wireless extensions.
But please understand that my problem as originally posted is my laptop is not detecting the 5G broadcast from my ATT UVerse modem/router which is supposed to be giving me 1Gb (which I realize is unrealistic). It’s only detecting the 2.4 G broadcast. I can scan all day long and it won’t see the 5G. Thus my original question – is the laptop’s network card incapable of detecting the 5G network and, therefore, I will never get anything better than about the 30-35Mb download and 15-17 Mb upload from the 2.4G broadcast?
> Sorry, but are some/all of the above suggestions to run from the command
> line?
>
> Or are you simply agreeing that my lappy’s wifi card is not capable of
> seeing a 5GHz broadcast from the modem/router?
Both.
AK
–
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
(R.J. Hanlon)
Many thanks to AK and Dean for confirming that the lappy is not capable of reading the 5G signal from my modem/router. Guess it’s time for a new laptop!:shame:
Well, just had a short look what offers you get (at the usual suspects which
I won’t name) when searching for “ABGN mini PCI-Express card” and looking for
other usual suspects considering linux compatibility “by default” (which I will
name, Atheros/Qualcomm and Intel).
Not really expensive, you certainly will get something for around 30-40€ or
less, so maybe worth some consideration.
Important note:
ABGN, the “A” is the code for “works in 5GHz band”.
AK
–
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
(R.J. Hanlon)
Thank you for this helpful information.
I’ve done a few quick Amazon.com searches and note that this is a common statement:
“Up to 300 Mbps data rate …”
Am I expecting way too much to think that “…up to…” 300 Mbps is terrible when I’m on a 1gig wifi network? I get better speeds than 300 Mbps on my cell phone.
Thanks again.
bosdad
Akoellh;2817366 Wrote:
> Am Thu, 23 Mar 2017 21:36:01 GMT
> schrieb bosdad <bosdad@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com>:
>
> > Guess it’s time for a new
> > laptop!
>
> Well, just had a short look what offers you get (at the usual suspects
> which
> I won’t name) when searching for “ABGN mini PCI-Express card” and
> looking for
> other usual suspects considering linux compatibility “by
> default” (which I will
> name, Atheros/Qualcomm and Intel).
>
> Not really expensive, you certainly will get something for around
> 30-40€ or
> less, so maybe worth some consideration.
>
> Important note:
>
> ABGN, the “A” is the code for “works in 5GHz band”.
>
> AK
>
> –
> Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
> stupidity.
> (R.J. Hanlon)
Thank you for this helpful information.
I’ve done a few quick Amazon.com searches and note that this is a common
statement:
“Up to 300 Mbps data rate …”
Am I expecting way too much to think that “…up to…” 300 Mbps is
terrible when I’m on a 1gig wifi network? I get better speeds than 300
Mbps on my cell phone.
Thanks again.
bosdad
You also need to check to router settings to see what bandwidth
settings are…
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
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Don’t know if this will provide any useful information but my settings are as follows:
wifi channel 9 (I’ve tried many channels – most seem to have 1, 2, or 3 networks on them but always changing)
current wifi channel 9 (20MHz)
channel frequency 20 MHz (default is 20MHz but can be changed to 40 MHz)
secondary channel – lower (can be changed to upper which is noted as default, but I get red warnings about channel selection when I try that)
wifi mode 802.11n/b/g 2.4 GHz (default)
transmit power 100
Don’t know if this will provide any useful information but my settings
are as follows:
wifi channel 9 (I’ve tried many channels – most seem to have 1, 2, or
3 networks on them but always changing)
current wifi channel 9 (20MHz)
channel frequency 20 MHz (default is 20MHz but can be changed to 40 MHz)
secondary channel – lower (can be changed to upper which is noted as
default, but I get red warnings about channel selection when I try that)
wifi mode 802.11n/b/g 2.4 GHz (default)
transmit power 100
bosdad
Hi
So change the Channel frequency to 40MHz and see how that goes. If your
all n then look at setting to n only as well.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE Leap 42.1|GNOME 3.16.2|4.1.38-50-default
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