Wifi performance quite dropped

[kloknibor]

Hi all,

I recently did an apt-get upgrade with the following upgradables :

bash:armhf/jessie 4.3-11 upgradeable to 4.3-11+deb8u1
bind9-host:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
ca-certificates:all/jessie 20141019+deb8u1 upgradeable to 20141019+deb8u2
dbus:armhf/jessie 1.8.20-0+deb8u1 upgradeable to 1.8.22-0+deb8u1
file:armhf/jessie 1:5.22+15-2+deb8u2 upgradeable to 1:5.22+15-2+deb8u3
jq:armhf/jessie 1.4-2.1 upgradeable to 1.4-2.1+deb8u1
libasound2:armhf/jessie 1.0.28-1+rpi1 upgradeable to 1.0.28-1+rpi2
libasound2-data:all/jessie 1.0.28-1+rpi1 upgradeable to 1.0.28-1+rpi2
libbind9-90:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libc-bin:armhf/jessie 2.19-18+deb8u6 upgradeable to 2.19-18+deb8u7
libc-dev-bin:armhf/jessie 2.19-18+deb8u6 upgradeable to 2.19-18+deb8u7
libc6:armhf/jessie 2.19-18+deb8u6 upgradeable to 2.19-18+deb8u7
libc6-dbg:armhf/jessie 2.19-18+deb8u6 upgradeable to 2.19-18+deb8u7
libc6-dev:armhf/jessie 2.19-18+deb8u6 upgradeable to 2.19-18+deb8u7
libcairo-gobject2:armhf/jessie 1.14.0-2.1+deb8u1+rpi1 upgradeable to 1.14.0-2.1+deb8u2
libcairo2:armhf/jessie 1.14.0-2.1+deb8u1+rpi1 upgradeable to 1.14.0-2.1+deb8u2
libdbus-1-3:armhf/jessie 1.8.20-0+deb8u1 upgradeable to 1.8.22-0+deb8u1
libdns-export100:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libdns100:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libfcgi-perl:armhf/jessie 0.77-1+b1 upgradeable to 0.77-1+deb8u1
libgnutls-deb0-28:armhf/jessie 3.3.8-6+deb8u3 upgradeable to 3.3.8-6+deb8u4
libgnutls-openssl27:armhf/jessie 3.3.8-6+deb8u3 upgradeable to 3.3.8-6+deb8u4
libgudev-1.0-0:armhf/jessie 215-17+deb8u5 upgradeable to 215-17+deb8u6
libhogweed2:armhf/jessie 2.7.1-5+deb8u1 upgradeable to 2.7.1-5+deb8u2
libio-socket-ssl-perl:all/jessie 2.002-2+deb8u1 upgradeable to 2.002-2+deb8u2
libirs-export91:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libisc-export95:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libisc95:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libisccc90:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libisccfg-export90:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libisccfg90:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
liblwres90:armhf/jessie 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u8 upgradeable to 1:9.9.5.dfsg-9+deb8u9
libmagic1:armhf/jessie 1:5.22+15-2+deb8u2 upgradeable to 1:5.22+15-2+deb8u3
libmpg123-0:armhf/jessie 1.20.1-2 upgradeable to 1.20.1-2+deb8u1
libnettle4:armhf/jessie 2.7.1-5+deb8u1 upgradeable to 2.7.1-5+deb8u2
libpam-modules:armhf/jessie 1.1.8-3.1+deb8u1 upgradeable to 1.1.8-3.1+deb8u2
libpam-modules-bin:armhf/jessie 1.1.8-3.1+deb8u1 upgradeable to 1.1.8-3.1+deb8u2
libpam-runtime:all/jessie 1.1.8-3.1+deb8u1 upgradeable to 1.1.8-3.1+deb8u2
libpam-systemd:armhf/jessie 215-17+deb8u5 upgradeable to 215-17+deb8u6
libpam0g:armhf/jessie 1.1.8-3.1+deb8u1 upgradeable to 1.1.8-3.1+deb8u2
libpng12-0:armhf/jessie 1.2.50-2+deb8u2 upgradeable to 1.2.50-2+deb8u3
libpng12-dev:armhf/jessie 1.2.50-2+deb8u2 upgradeable to 1.2.50-2+deb8u3
libsystemd0:armhf/jessie 215-17+deb8u5 upgradeable to 215-17+deb8u6
libtiff5:armhf/jessie 4.0.3-12.3+deb8u1 upgradeable to 4.0.3-12.3+deb8u2
libudev1:armhf/jessie 215-17+deb8u5 upgradeable to 215-17+deb8u6
libwmf0.2-7:armhf/jessie 0.2.8.4-10.3+deb8u1 upgradeable to 0.2.8.4-10.3+deb8u2
locales:all/jessie 2.19-18+deb8u6 upgradeable to 2.19-18+deb8u7
multiarch-support:armhf/jessie 2.19-18+deb8u6 upgradeable to 2.19-18+deb8u7
sed:armhf/jessie 4.2.2-4 upgradeable to 4.2.2-4+deb8u1
suckless-tools:armhf/jessie 40-1+deb8u1 upgradeable to 40-1+deb8u2
systemd:armhf/jessie 215-17+deb8u5 upgradeable to 215-17+deb8u6
systemd-sysv:armhf/jessie 215-17+deb8u5 upgradeable to 215-17+deb8u6
tzdata:all/jessie 2016f-0+deb8u1 upgradeable to 2016j-0+deb8u1
udev:armhf/jessie 215-17+deb8u5 upgradeable to 215-17+deb8u6
wireless-regdb:all/jessie 2014.11.18-1 upgradeable to 2016.06.10-1~deb8u1
x11-common:all/jessie 1:7.7+7 upgradeable to 1:7.7+16

running on an pi3 : Linux 4.4.41-v7+ #942 SMP Mon Jan 9 15:00:25 GMT 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

with an WN725n (TP-Link) dongle

after this update my wifi performance has been so bad it is practically unusable. Which of this packages might have influence? I tried to downgrade wireless-redb (just a random guess) but the old version is not available :

wireless-regdb:
Installed: 2016.06.10-1~deb8u1
Candidate: 2016.06.10-1~deb8u1
Version table:
*** 2016.06.10-1~deb8u1 0
500 http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie/main armhf Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Who knows how to fix this?

Kind regards,

Robin

[wh7qq]

Have you moved the RPi since upgrading? How far is it from the wifi source? Walls? Wifi speed depends on signal strength. The single largest cause of wifi slowdown is distance. The antenna on the board is very small and size does matter! After that, you could be experiencing interference from other devices such as a microwave oven or a neighbor's wifi. You could try a different wifi channel on your router...1 or 11 are good choices. What is the output of

Code: Select all

iwlist scan

down to "mode master"?

I don't know what the effect of increasing the power output of the RPi wifi chip is, or if it even works but you could check out this post:http://www.hacking-tutorial.com/hacking ... ali-linux/.

[aplocher]

I am in the midst of the same issue you described, only with a Pi Zero. Incredibly slow wifi! I'm not sure why this happened, I haven't ran updates on this Pi in quite some time. I'm running the updates to try to fix these problems I began having today.

One thing I noticed, calling locale generates several errors and has much of the information set back to en_GB (despite me changing it [months ago] to en_US). Something with my locale settings got corrupted, which might explain why so many of those updates are nearly the same version number (what does deb8u7/6/etc mean?)!

Also, syslog is riddled with messages like this (notice it's changing wifi reg domain to WORLD and then back to US I think):

Code: Select all

Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 wpa_supplicant[443]: nl80211: Was expecting local disconnect but got another disconnect event first
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 wpa_supplicant[443]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=d8:50:e6:aa:17:42 reason=0
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 dhcpcd[589]: wlan0: carrier lost
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 rsyslogd-2007: action 'action 17' suspended, next retry is Wed Jan 18 09:00:44 2017 [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2007 ]
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048136] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048167] cfg80211:  DFS Master region: unset
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048180] cfg80211:   (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp), (dfs_cac_time)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048197] cfg80211:   (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm), (N/A)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048210] cfg80211:   (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm), (N/A)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048221] cfg80211:   (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm), (N/A)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048235] cfg80211:   (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 80000 KHz, 160000 KHz AUTO), (N/A, 2000 mBm), (N/A)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048249] cfg80211:   (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 80000 KHz, 160000 KHz AUTO), (N/A, 2000 mBm), (0 s)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048261] cfg80211:   (5490000 KHz - 5730000 KHz @ 160000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm), (0 s)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048273] cfg80211:   (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 80000 KHz), (N/A, 2000 mBm), (N/A)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.048284] cfg80211:   (57240000 KHz - 63720000 KHz @ 2160000 KHz), (N/A, 0 mBm), (N/A)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 wpa_supplicant[443]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=CORE type=WORLD
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.139869] cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: US
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.139901] cfg80211:  DFS Master region: FCC
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.139911] cfg80211:   (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp), (dfs_cac_time)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.139927] cfg80211:   (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A, 3000 mBm), (N/A)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.139943] cfg80211:   (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 80000 KHz, 160000 KHz AUTO), (N/A, 1700 mBm), (N/A)
Jan 18 09:00:14 BC-BBCAM-01 kernel: [123210.139957] cfg80211:   (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 80000 KHz, 160000 KHz AUTO), (N/A, 2300 mBm), (0 s)

I'm currently allowing it to finish the updates (so painful and slow) before I reboot, but the general fix should be something like:

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export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
export LANG=en_US
sudo localectl set-locale "LANG=en_US"
sudo locale-gen
sudo reboot

And make sure you have "country=US" at the top of your /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf file (or whatever country you're in).

Once I reboot with the new locale stuff properly configured, I will attempt the updates again and see if it attempts to install any en_US region specific packages and we'll see if that speeds things up.

[kloknibor]

Have you moved the RPi since upgrading? How far is it from the wifi source? Walls? Wifi speed depends on signal strength. The single largest cause of wifi slowdown is distance. The antenna on the board is very small and size does matter! After that, you could be experiencing interference from other devices such as a microwave oven or a neighbor's wifi. You could try a different wifi channel on your router...1 or 11 are good choices. What is the output of

Code: Select all

iwlist scan

down to "mode master"?

I don't know what the effect of increasing the power output of the RPi wifi chip is, or if it even works but you could check out this post:http://www.hacking-tutorial.com/hacking ... ali-linux/.

Hi!

Thanks for your answer but no the pi hasn't moved and I can reproduce this easily with an apt-get update and apt-get upgrade every time! So this would not be the issue. Also as mentioned I'm using an TP-Link WN-725N (external wifi dongle) on the pi 3 since it is in an metal casing. So it surely is something with the software but thanks for trying to think with us though!

[aplocher]

I just wanted to followup about the issue I described above, all of my locale / wifi issues do seem to be mostly resolved. There were no additional updates, but I use this particular Pi for streaming lowres video from the raspicam over wifi and it's now working again like it did before.

If your problem is similar to what I experienced, then I think the main things to check are:

"country=US"

is at top of wpa_supplicant.conf

And these commands should fix the rest:

export LC_ALL="en_US"
export LANG=en_US
sudo localectl set-locale "LANG=en_US"
sudo locale-gen
sudo reboot

[wh7qq]

Also as mentioned I'm using an TP-Link WN-725N (external wifi dongle) on the pi 3 since it is in an metal casing. So it surely is something with the software but thanks for trying to think with us though!

As with many USB dongles, the casing of the USB connector of the TP725n is metal but antennas that are intended to send and receive signals to/from the outside are never fully enclosed in grounded metal. The antenna itself, also a small chip in the TP725n, is out in the open where it can send and receive signals. The plastic on the end functions as a radome, protecting the antenna and internal parts as well as providing a convenient grip. The association you make with the software, based on the metal housing does not follow.

aplocher's suggestions are worth following up if you are located in the US; otherwise adjust the commands to your location and language, but don't rule out weak signals or interference based on the metal connector body of the TP725n. "That dog don't hunt."

[wh7qq]

A possible solution is given here: http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/ge ... k-chipsets