Slow wifi compared to windows on dual boot system

General system Newbie
1

Wifi connection on laptop is slower on Endeavour OS then on Windows. I run a Dell G3 3590 with dual boot windows and internet is considerably slower on linux (not just endeavour os). I am using ath10k_pci driver. My chip is QCA9377 and doing a duckduckgo reveals all kinds of general issues with this chip but nothing on slow internet. Just a few minutes ago the internet icon on kde showed an exclamation mark and I had to disconnect and reconnect to get network back. Is this a hardware problem or my router issue and how do I figure that out?

lspci -v with only network controller output.

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
        Subsystem: Dell Device 0949
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255
        I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
        Memory at a5304000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Memory at a5300000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 01
        Capabilities: [b0] MSI-X: Enable- Count=4 Masked-
        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
        Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel
        Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 01-00-00-00-68-4c-e0-00
        Capabilities: [170] Latency Tolerance Reporting
        Capabilities: [178] L1 PM Substates

04:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 31)
        Subsystem: Dell Device 1810
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 146
        Memory at a5000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/8 Maskable+ 64bit-
        Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
        Capabilities: [148] Virtual Channel
        Capabilities: [168] Device Serial Number 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
        Capabilities: [178] Latency Tolerance Reporting
        Capabilities: [180] L1 PM Substates
        Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci

journalctl |grep wlan output [https://pastebin.com/UV6mvbEZ]

2

I venture a guess - the device is constantly renegotiating the connection. The reason it is not doing on Windows is a driver tweak on Windows which do not - yet - exist for the Linux kernel.

3

Do you have any proof for that claim? I can post more terminal info if necessary. I am on lts kernel if that helps.

4

Not at all - just a hunch.

Everything I found for this adapter is Windows related - one repo with a - now - unmaintained pkgbuild. The reason it is now unmaintained is possibly the author don’t use that type of card anymore. A rather well known Arch user I would say. I think the driver is OK - you could try building the package.

A couple of links to Arch bbs

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=233379 (tagged with solved)

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=208880 (not tagged)

1 Like
5

If the issue is with Internet connectivity specifically, rather than wifi network speeds, then the issue is unlikely to be the wifi card.

Saying “slow internet” is like saying “slow roads” - there are many possible causes, and they aren’t likely to be caused by your car.

6

I went through those posts and have seen the driver but idk if I want a stale driver or not.

7

It isn’t slow connectivity. I can download from the repos fine. Not always top speed but I get at least 2mbps. However when I use firefox to browse then it becomes visibly slower. Twitch videos take longer to load or will crash in the middle with network error. Other streaming sites also will not load whereas they load on windows in the exact same firefox profile ( I have it setup so that both my windows and linux firefox use the same profile folder, its amazing). Also the net dropping seems to have become a big problem now as the internet will simply drop after a while randomly and the wifi icon on plasma will show a small excalmation mark.