My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15 - 5578.
I have been battling this problem for a long time, but I just don’t know what to do. It’s gotten so bad I can hardly use openSUSE TW anymore.
The problem: I boot up my laptop into openSUSE TW, log in and connect to WiFi. I’m able to pass traffic for a minute or two, then no traffic will go across my WiFi connection. The only way to pass traffic again is to disconnect from my WiFi and reconnect. but that only enables me to pass traffic for another 2-3 minutes, then traffic stops. Repeat over and over and over.
I have ensured the problem is not with my WiFi router because while my openSUSE TW laptop is unable to communicate I am simultaneously able to use another laptop (Windows 10) and an Android phone (Galaxy S5) using the same WiFi. The WiFi router and my laptop do not drop the connection, the connection just stops passing traffic. Other devices continue to work fine. Also, when I dual-boot into Windows 10 on my laptop, I have zero issues with WiFi. Due to the problem only appearing in openSUSE and not Windows 10, I am thinking it’s a driver problem. But I really don’t know.
Last night I decided to run a continuous ping to google.com from Konsole to see what happens when I am unable to pass traffic. I am going to paste some curated results:
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=18 ttl=55 time=82.8 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=20 ttl=55 time=32.3 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=21 ttl=55 time=32.5 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=49 ttl=55 time=33.1 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=50 ttl=55 time=32.9 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=51 ttl=55 time=34.0 ms
Notice how the sequence number goes from 21 to 49. That loss of ability to pass data traffic wasn’t too long.
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=110 ttl=55 time=32.7 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=111 ttl=55 time=33.1 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=148 ttl=55 time=32.1 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=149 ttl=55 time=32.3 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=150 ttl=55 time=33.4 ms
Again, the above snippet of ping results shows a big gap between sequence 111 and 148.
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=241 ttl=55 time=75.4 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=242 ttl=55 time=128 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=364 ttl=55 time=32.4 ms
64 bytes from nrt13s37-in-f14.1e100.net (216.58.220.238): icmp_seq=365 ttl=55 time=32.4 ms
Now that outage above was very long. Several minutes.
linux-q5o0:~ # uname -a
Linux linux-q5o0 4.13.5-1-default #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Oct 5 18:28:26 UTC 2017 (3fd9659) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Is anyone else having this problem with their Dell Inspiron 15?
I’m happy to provide any information you request while troubleshooting this maddening problem.