Wifi on Manjaro KDE is inconsistant and slow

Support Network
,
1

Hello there,
I have had Manjaro installed for a a few months, but I have had this persistent issue with my WiFi.

  1. It doesn’t show all the networks around me. Sometimes, it will show some, but not others
  2. It sometimes will not connect to a network if it does show up
  3. Sometimes, the connected network will stop working
  4. The wifi manager shows all the Wifi connections as weak, despite on other devices, their connection being strong
  5. For any network I connect to, it is a lot slower than if I was on Windows.

This is my device info:

Network controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH CNVi WiFi (rev 10)
        DeviceName: Onboard - Ethernet
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Wireless-AC 9560
        Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
        Kernel modules: iwlwifi

I have already tried

/etc/modprobe.d/iwlmvm.conf

options iwlmvm power_scheme=1

What am I missing here? What do I try?

2

Wondering if it’s an issue due to the frequencies allowed for Wifi varying by country. So: what country are you in, and have you set /etc/conf.d/wireless-regdom (by uncommenting the appropriate line) to the appropriate country? (I think you’ll need to reboot for any changes to take affect)

3

I live in the USA. I set the appropriate country, but I don’t think it affected anything

4

OK, not likely to be that. You said “For any network I connect to, it is a lot slower than if I was on Windows” - can you explain that a bit more? Are you dual-booting, or are you connecting to the Wifi from a different machine? If you’re dual-booting, have you made sure to turn Fast Startup off?

5

I used to run Windows 10 on my machine, but I switched to Manjaro. I believe fast statup is off. When I used Windows, the internet seemed faster. I never had any of the issues that I now have with Manjaro. Things load more slowly on the internet on Manjaro. I’m assuming it’s some sort of driver issue, right?

6

Well, not necessarily. If you’re dual-booting with Windows and Fast Startup enabled, Windows may leave the state of some pieces of hardware in a partially configured state, which will cause problems. That said, you say you used to run Windows 10, so it certainly sounds like you turned it off.

It’s really hard to say what’s going on here. Generally speaking, Intel Wifi modules are solid, so it seems unlikely that it’s a driver issue. Out of interest, have you actually tested download speeds / packet loss? Try Cloudflare’s Speed Test, and compare the results for your problematic machine and some other machine that you don’t feel is sluggish. That should give a lot of data with which to work with.

My current feeling is that this may be a hardware issue, like if the antenna is disconnected / damaged somehow, but at the moment there isn’t really enough data to work with.

7

On Manjaro, the test yielded a 10.4 Mbps download, and a 1.65 Mbps upload speed.
On my Andriod Phone, the test yielded a 48.9 Mbps download, and a 20.1 Mbps upload speed

I could potentially try to get an external wifi antenna, I’m not sure if anything is wrong with my wifi card

8

Before buying anything new, I’d do a quick sanity check: grab an Ubuntu Live USB, and repeat the test. If you get a better result, it’s almost certainly a configuration that’s wrong somewhere (including, possibly, a default Manjaro config). Otherwise, I’d put money on it being a hardware thing.

Note that it might be as simple as the connection to the Wifi card internally - I’ve had the antenna wires pop out of a card, as well as the antenna wires getting damaged (on an old, poorly designed motherboard). So even if it is hardware, do inspect it first to make sure it’s not something you can fix.