slow internet on wifi

English Network/Internet
1

I installed Open Suse 13.2. For my wireless card, details given below based on suggestion on this forum i installed the driver
broadcom-wl-kmp-desktop.

Although internet works and signal strength shows good i find the pages take long to load on firefox.

Since i use a broadband connection the network itself is not an issue on other devices.

Any suggestions or advice on what i may be missing?

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1704 802.11n + BT 4.0 [1028:0016]
Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge

2

Hi
So did you also install the broadcom-wl package, which should contain the blacklist file as that indicates it’s still using the standard driver.

Oh, and you did check for the correct kernel in use for the kmp?

3

SOP:

Verify whether a network problem or a system problem. You can’t even start before determining this basic question
Trace route to a remote location

traceroute *remoteURL *

The traceroute should return not only the latent pings from routers, but can also tell you if you have a name resolution issue if you’re trying to connect to a resource by name.

If you are connected to any kind of network connection that’s not Fast Ethernet (10/100), change your TCP/IP Congestion Control algorithm (I describe why and how in my following article along with other stuff like TCP/IP buffers and application layer windows)
https://sites.google.com/site/4techsecrets/optimize-and-fix-your-network-connection

You should know that like any other type of wireless, signal strength has <zero> relevance to throughput. You can have a very weak signal with maximum throughput and vice versa, so pay no attention to how many bars you see as long as you are connected.

Like many other issues, you can dive as deep as you want, but these two items are reasonable starting points.

TSU

4

Thanks for looking into my thread malcolmlewis.

I am a newbie at linux who moved from Debian to Open Suse.

Based on below instructions i had updated the driver. Does this info help?

After that you can do this in two ways, either use the GUI (YAST -> Software Manager) and search for broadcom-wl-kmp-desktop and install that (it’ll install broadcom-wl too) or, as root or with sudo, issue; zypper install broadcom-wl-kmp-desktop

5

Hi
So does the file/etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl-blacklist exist then?

6

Sorry for the late revert malcolmlewis. The file does exit. Below are its content.

modules blacklisted for broadcom-wl

blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43
blacklist ndiswrapper
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist bcma
blacklist brcmsmac

Cant seem to edit its content.

7

You can edit if you invoke your text editor with root permissions. Exact command may depend on your Desktop… eg

KDE

kdesu kate /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl-blacklist

LXDE/XFCE
In openSUSE 13.2, leafpad is the Desktop text editor, so the following
From a console

su
leafpad /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl-blacklist

Using the vim text editor is similar to LXDE/XFCE except you use the “vi” command

su
vi /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl-blacklist

HTH,
TSU

8

Thanks TSU.

I changed my router which was a D-Link G router to a D-Link N router in the hope it improves my connection speed. However, it was marginal.

Am i missing something. This is a new install of 13.2 with no additional software other than the Broadcom driver installed.

Could this be an issue with the driver?

Please help.

Thanks,
James