Wifi frequently stops working: replace hardware?

January 11, 2022

My wifi has worked for years but recently it’s been very patchy; often showing connected no internet; high packet loss between it and the router. Turning it off and on again seems to help most the time, but it’s happening more frequently.

I’m not sure if it’s likely to be to do with a change in kernel (I’m on Ubuntu 20.04, 5.4.0-91-generic #102-Ubuntu SMP) or a hardware failure. Do wifi cards just get old and stop working?

lshw gives this:

description: Wireless interface
product: Wireless 8265 / 8275
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: wlp2s0
version: 78
serial: f8:94:c2:8b:5d:c1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=5.4.0-91-generic firmware=36.77d01142.0
               ip=192.168.1.118 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:142 memory:ddc00000-ddc01fff

Running sudo journalctl -k -g iwlwifi gives only this:

iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Applying debug destination EXTERNAL_DRAM
iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: FW already configured (0) - re-configuring

I read at wireless.wiki.kernel.org/…iwlwifi to download files firmware from:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/

and place in /lib/firmware but that just causes errors like

iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: uCode file size 12055247 does not match expected size

I’m thinking of just buying new hardware in the hope that that will fix it. But if anyone here knows whether it’s more likely iwlwifi’s fault and what to do, that would be very helpful. Also, I typically have thought that Intel wifi hardware is generally well supported on Ubuntu, so if it’s a likely recent bug in iwlwifi I’d be jumping from the frying pan into the fire by buying a new Intel wifi card.

>Solution :

There are several possibilities.

Your Hardware is faulty

Remove or disable the Hardware and try with an other working one from a friend/neighbour

Your environment is very noisy, then you can see it:

Install "wavemon" (sudo apt-get install wavemon)
start it: sudo wavemon
press F2 to see the signal strength
press F3 to see the other networks in your environment
with ALT + Q you can quit the program

Interpretation of the seen data (here as example):

HomeWifi       00:00:00:00:00:00 100%, -36 dBm, ch   6, 2437 MHz 8 sta, Radio Measure                                                                                                         

FRITZ!Box 7490 AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA  40%, -82 dBm, ch   1, 2412 MHz 5 sta, 11% chan, Radio Measure                                                                                               

<hidden ESSID> BB:BB:BB:BB:BB:BB  39%, -83 dBm, ch   1, 2412 MHz 3 sta, 7% chan

If the dB value is -36dB, then the received-signal power is better that -82dB. (should be clear)

If there are a low number of other router using the same channel as you, this is better.

There are other noise-creators which can not be seen during this scan. To example a microwave oven is creating 1000 Watt of power in the area of 2.4GHz and your router can only create 0.1Watt of power. The housing of a microwave-oven is not perfectly sealed.

An other possibility to scan the wifi-network is the command: