WiFi speed often dropping to 0 however not disconnected on Realtek RTL8821CE

Roughly every 10-20 minutes, the WiFi speed on my laptop will drop to 0kbps, and running a ping command produces no output. During this time, Chromium will stall on “Resolving Host” and nothing will load. Here is the output of inxi -Nn

Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter 
  driver: rtl8821ce 
  IF: wlo1 state: up mac: 5c:3a:45:27:64:47 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  driver: r8169 
  IF: eno1 state: down mac: bc:e9:2f:85:c3:57 

This may be a driver issue as I had to install DKMS drivers to get my wireless network card to work, however I really don’t want to have to reinstall them as for some reason the download would never finish and I had to do a lot of tinkering to get it to work.

I can fix this issue temporarily by disconnecting and reconnecting from my wifi, however this is very tempermental and only sometimes works.
It is also definitely not an issue with my router because the wifi works flawlessly on every other device connected to my network.

I know this topic is similar to another, however I am kind of a Linux noob and really don’t want to mess up anything by running commands meant for another network card on mine, and I don’t know really how to amend them to work with the Realtek RTL8821CE. I am using a HP Pavilion 15 laptop if that helps.

Thank you so much, hopefully I can get this fixed as this has been bugging me since I got Manjaro installed.

Also, I just remembered, I am currently on Kernel 5.7 as when I updated to 5.8 the WiFi was not working at all, so I just downgraded back to 5.7.

Try with kernel 5.9rc.

So if I install kernel 5.9rc, will I have to uninstall the DKMS drivers for the native support to function, or will it simply override the DKMS drivers? Also, if I install 5.9rc, since it is an experimental build, can I easily update to the full release once it comes out?

You need uninstall only drivers for Realtek RTL8821CE form AUR. You can leave DKMS.

Ok, how would I uninstall it? Here is the output of dkms status:

rtl8821ce, 1.0.5.r101.g77ca48c, 5.7.14-1-MANJARO, x86_64: installed

Would I just do it from pamac or would I have to use dkms remove?

Chose what you prefer. Both methods should wok :wink:

Cool, I’ll try that tomorrow and let you know how it goes!

Okay, so I just installed Kernel 5.9rc6, and after the install removed the DKMS drivers with pamac, however now the WiFi is just not working at all, and it does not seem to even have a driver for my network card. Here is the new output of inxi -Nn:
Network: Device-1: Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter driver: N/A Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 IF: eno1 state: down mac: bc:e9:2f:85:c3:57 IF-ID-1: enp3s0f3u2 state: unknown speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: a2:94:8e:37:95:d1

As you can see, now the driver is just displayed as N/A, so there are no active drivers for my network card. I am currently posting this from USB tethering with my phone, so I am able to downgrade back to Kernel 5.7 and reinstall the DKMS drivers if necessary.

Also, here is the relevant output of lspci -v:

01:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
	DeviceName: Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11 ac 1x1 WiFi + BT 4.2 Combo Adapter (MU-MIMO supported)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 831a
	Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 11, IOMMU group 7
	I/O ports at f000 [disabled] [size=256]
	Memory at fea00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=64K]
	Capabilities: access denied

Maybe it will be fully implemented in stable :thinking: Now you should return to DKMS driver and try some tricks from this discussion. Maybe something will be useful in your situation.