Other Slow Wifi

[Mike33]

Hi
I've just got a NUC 8i7BEH kit) to replace my old windows 7 laptop, & I decided to try Linux instead of Windows. I have installed Mint 19 cinnamon, but the wifi connection is very slow (<2Mb/s vs 64Mb on the windows 7 machine, using the same router and speedchecker). Router is Virgin Media Hub 3.0.
After reading about this problem on several forums I:
1. Upgraded mint to 19.1Tessa - Kernel 4.15.0.20 64 bit - Base is Ubuntu 18.04 bionic
2. Disabled power management for wireless chipset
3. Ran SUDO APT-GET-UPGRADE
None of these made any difference. I wonder if ths is a driver problem?

Running sudo lshw gives hardware information and I notice that the firmware numbers are different:

----Extract from sudo lshw:

*-network:0
description: Wireless interface
product: Intel Corporation
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 14.3
bus info: pci@0000:00:14.3
logical name: wlp0s20f3
version: 30
serial: 00:bb:60:47:09:9b
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi
driverversion=4.15.0-20-generic
firmware=34.3125811985.0
ip=192.168.0.19 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: iomemory:400-3ff irq:16 memory:404ac10000-404ac13fff

----From Intel website:

Device Kernels Firmware
Intel® Wireless-AC 9560 4.14+ iwlwifi-9000-pu-b0-jf-b0-34.618819.0.tgz

I can download the reccommended driver from Intel website, but I dont know if it's possible to install this in Linux.

Don't know if it's relevant, but I originally downloaded Linux Mint 19, but couldn't get anywhere with validating the

checksum, so I bought a USB version, but this wasn't recognised as bootable until I changed from UEFI to BIOS. Now that Mint is installed it will only boot in Bios.

Anybody else had slow WiFi problems in Linux? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Choidebu]

You know it's a bit of a stretch asking this here... why don't you ask at the forums you said you read?

Looks like it's a software problem.. To eliminate hardware problem's possibility, try getting the machine as close as possible to the router in a LoS. See if there's any difference. Also try tightening the antenna(s).

If none of that helps, then it's a software issue. IIRC in Linux networking drivers are baked in the kernel, so you either recompile your own or wait for the changes to be available upstream. That or choose another distro that have it.

 

[Mike33]

Hi Choidebu
I thought there might be someone else with a NUC has had the same problem. I've already posted on a couple of linux forums but nobody there with the same machine I suppose. Maybe I''ll try a different distro as you suggest.
Cheers, Mike

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Can you try with a more recent recent kernel ? I'd suggest a Manjaro with KDE/Plasma, the live USB image ships with 4.19 LTS: https://manjaro.org/download/kde/

You do not need to install it, just burn the image to an USB drive and boot from it.

Did you try your WiFi module in another computer ?

 

[Choidebu]

Hi Choidebu
I thought there might be someone else with a NUC has had the same problem. I've already posted on a couple of linux forums but nobody there with the same machine I suppose. Maybe I''ll try a different distro as you suggest.
Cheers, Mike

It's not so much the platform as the wifi card itself. NUC, like laptops, use m.2 wifi card. It's not embedded to the motherboard. Look for your particular wifi card model (intel 9560? That's pretty new) and see if it's supported, and in which kernel version.

Otherwise, you need to merge the driver and recompile your kernel - which nobody that asks these questions should do lol. I believe I tried in the past and the aftermath still haunts me.