Starting a new thread as the others don’t seem to be showing the same issues.
Is anyone else having terrible issues with this adapter when it is under heavy use? Invariably after a minute or two all traffic completely stops (connection still shows up) until I stop/start the wireless again. I’m seeing errors in the logs that match the issues described at [SOLVED] iwlwifi: Microcode SW error detected. Restarting 0x0. / Kernel & Hardware / Arch Linux Forums and I’ve tried several of those fixes.
The only one that seems to work is 11n_disable=1 which is a terrible choice because it cuts the speed down to at max 20-30Mbit/s from the 200-300Mbit/s I was getting without it (before it chokes and dies at least). Tried kernels 5.11 through 5.14 and that makes no difference.
Per someone in that thread reporting a QCA6174A Qualcom based adapter works flawlessly I’ve ordered one of those to test with.
To clarify what I mean by heavy use: pulling files off a local NFS share, running iperf, etc. Normal web browsing (even watching Youtube videos) doesn’t kill it.
Yes! Im having the same problems with it under Ubuntu 21.10. It worked fine for about a half a day, then it started having speed issues. Finally it just stopped working.
Im installing windows 11 now (eww) to see if I will have the same issues.
Its worth noting that I’ve had problems with Intel’s wifi adapters in the past. I bought a PCIe AX200 adapter for my gaming tower a while back that experienced exactly the same problems as youre describing under both Windows and Linux. The only thing that helped was disabling the AX radio under device settings in Windows. After that it was stable but stuck at 802.11n speeds.
From reading the thread I linked and others like it apparently the intel driver support for it (in Linux) in general is spotty at best. I get than many people are going to use Windows but making the ‘default’ recommended adapter (by offering it directly for sale) something that flaky is mildly annoying especially considering everything else about it has been rock solid so far.
I wonder if it’s a thermal issue. I have a desktop PCIe wifi+bluetooth adapter because my desktop and my router are on opposite sides of the apartment. Right before I experience this issue, I can see the thermal sensor on the wifi adapter reporting quite high temperatures (~50-60°C).
That certainly may be possible as most times I’ve seen it the laptop is in my lap. At work it’s sitting on a flat desk and I haven’t noticed it nearly as often (but I also haven’t stressed it nearly as hard there either).
Followup: Having replaced the card with a Qualcomm using the Atheros driver the issue persists. Heat doesn’t seem to be the cause as it’s running into the same errors sitting on a desk never going above 50C.
I even updated to 21.10 to see if there is any difference and there is none. I’m wondering if it’s some incompatibility with my TP-Link AP. I’ve had issues in the past with my Macbook but it has been working.
Followup: I replaced my current AP (a TP-Link EAP245 AC) with a new LInksys Velop with AX support and the wireless has been rock-solid with 0 dropouts. I guess it was some incompatibility between the Linux drivers and it.
I’m facing that same issue with different Linux distributions.
The guides on changing the ucode don’t actually work and like you’ve experienced, the only thing that works is that 11n_disable thing that cuts speed drastically.
@Michael_Cowart did you end up getting the Qualcomm adapter? Does it work better than the Intel one?
@MikeCH - are you using wifi 6 or wifi 6e? I am running Pop!_OS and while I haven’t had success on the 6GHz band, the connection screams on the 5GHz (Pop reporting 866 Mb/s on 5.8GHz) band, 399 Mbps tested at the laptop with https://speedof.me. The access point is an Asus GT-AXE11000. I did get the 6GHz band working in windows, but I’m rarely booted into it, so just waiting on better linux driver support to make use of that.
@MikeCH I did but it actually made no difference; it showed the exact same behavior as the Intel. I ended up completely replacing the AP with a Wifi 6 capable Linksys and now the Intel adapter works fine (was getting full gigabit over it before I moved all my older devices to it).
I am using 6e as I have 3 NetGear AX620 aps installed around the house…
And I have 3 Linux distros on my FW laptop with the exact same symptom. Doesn’t matter the kernel, doesn’t matter what I do, it behaves exactly the same as described by OP.
On Win 11 no issues at all!
That’s really weird… So maybe some setting in the WiFi AP is triggering this? I need to test my other laptop with the AX201 and see if it spits the same lyrics…
@MikeCH - I’m certainly no expert in this, but looking up the ax620 it doesn’t appear to support 6GHz (the ‘e’ in 6e, if my googling is correct). That’s the issue that I have run into - I can use that band from windows, but not linux. With that said, I’m getting great speeds on the 5GHz wifi 6 band. Is the issue that you are running into the connection speed dropping during sustained transfer? If so, I can test that out and see if I hit the same thing. I haven’t run into it but it’s not a normal scenario for me. Happy to experiment if it will help to narrow down if it is router setting or something that can be configured to work and deliver good results.
Hey, I’m no expert either and also got confused… Now that I’ve looked at it, Indeed the wax620 doesn’t operate 6E but only WiFi 6 (ax) over 5Ghz.
The behaviour I’m facing is that whenever transfers happen that are more bulky (p.ex. watching a video on YT) the connection stalls… Shows as connected still but traffic stops entirely. I have then to force a reconnection and it starts flowing again but after that I don’t even need to be doing traffic… It just randomly stops.
It’s weird because at the log level from either the AP or the laptop itself I don’t see anything that screams where the issue is.
Other devices I have work without a problem (iOS, Android, Windows)… Need to check my other laptops using Linux too as I have a few different WiFi cards around and can try to check what is the behaviour…
Ok, abut 10GB into a 64GB pull onto the laptop from a server in my network, it’s holding at about 30MBps. I did have a dropout around 3GB that lasted for about a minute, during which the transfer slowed considerably, but it picked back up after than and has been more or less steady. Not sure if it was on the server side from needing to read the file from disk, but that’s my guess without digging into things further. So the good news is that the setup seems to be able to sustain sizeable transfers. The next step is to figure out if there’s a setting that can be adjusted in your setup to prevent the issue from occurring.
Completed 64gb download then re-upload. The upload never throttled, and things held steady around 35MBps. This is on Pop!_OS 21.10 and via an Asus GT-AXE11000 access point.
I’m going to check settings on my APs but… I find it weird that for all other machines everything is fine and it’s only the linux (for the time being the FW laptop) that gets all weird.
I’m using endeavour, however I also have Elementary and Kali on the laptop for… Reasons and same behaviour…
Need to grab my other laptops and put linux in a couple of them and test…
Will add more info either later today or tomorrow on this.
So I managed to still have some time to dedicate to this lost cause and it is something weird on the FW laptop side…
I’ve booted the same live distro on both an HO Spectre I have (AX201) and the FW laptop to see that the Spectre has absolutely no connectivity issues… Pulling data both from local server as the internet without any constraint.
The FW laptop however… Yeah… Cool story bro! Drops face planted to the ground in less than a minute.
Going to see if I can grab a 201 cheap from local supplier and install it on the FW laptop but… I’m starting to consider selling it as I don’t need another Windows 11 laptop, and it doesn’t work with what I want it to do so.
Based on our communication with the Intel Linux WiFi driver team, their patches for all known AX210 issues are in kernel 5.17. It’s unfortunate that previous versions have assorted issues, but we do expect WiFi and Bluetooth stability to be good starting from 5.17 with the AX210.