Working wifi has now stopped connecting

[bk201]

I got fed up with ubuntu - reasons are many. So, yesterday, I installed Fedora 17. Everything was working out of the box. Wifi was working too. After a couple of installations (the usual stuff - codecs, editors etc) though, I cannot connect to the wireless network that I was working on just a few minutes ago. I have checked in win7 and that network works fine. The signal srrength is a bit weak though. But if it was connecting before - and if its connecting on windows - then it should connect on fedora too. Here's some info:

$ lspci -v -nn -k
...
12:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell XPS 8300 [1028:0010]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at fbd00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
...
...

$ iwconfig
p1p2      no wireless extensions.

ppp0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=19 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off

I am running Fedora 17 64 bit.
Also, please keep it in cosideration that I a fairly new to linux. So, if you need the output of any other command - please just let me knoe. Thanks.

---------- Post added at 07:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:43 PM ----------

Btw, has anyone else experienced this problem - I mean with a weak signal, the connection works on windows but not fedora??

[braystacey]

I am having the same issue. I can connect through wireless but the connection is extremely weak. I don't have my laptop here but some relevant details that I can remember are:

Dell Vostro V131
Intel Wireless Centrino N
Fedora 17 KDE 32-bit

My WiFi signal is quite weak anyway (damn you Virgin Media "Super"Hub), but all my other appliances work around the house, my Fedora laptop can't get a connection 12ft away through one wall!

Sorry I can't add anything to the debate at this point but if I find anything useful I'll post back.

Regards,
Simon.

Edit:
There is an old thread here which seems to cover the same issue. No solutions though.

[Gil Henck]

+1 work find the first month now no more connection at all. What is going on?

[lklaus]

Do you happen to have some of the following messages in /var/log/messages?

WARNING: at drivers/net/wireless/brcm80211/brcmsmac/main.c:7990 brcms_c_wait_for_tx_completion+0x8a/0xa0 [brcmsmac]()

or

ieee80211 phy52: brcms_c_ampdu_dotxstatus_complete: Pkt tx suppressed, illegal channel possibly

(as root: grep -e WARNING: -e illegal /var/log/messages)

Whenever this happens I'm dropping of the net and have to remove and reload the brcmsmac module

[BBQdave]

I am sorry to say I have no solution to offer

But I have experienced odd wireless network connections too. This has happened with different net gear (routers, modems) and two different ISP's.

To resolve slow or no wireless connection, I shutdown and reboot. To qualify, I have a signal, fairly strong, just difficulty loading web pages or running web applications. I have tried shutting off the firewall, no difference in wireless performance.

I have a Toshiba Satellite C655 (Linux friendly hardware). Everything worked great initially with F16 (64-bit) Xfce, then with kernel upgrades and keeping system up to date - funky wireless

[marko]

It might be a good idea to look in your /var/log/wpa_supplicant file If there are problems with the encryption or other security problems they would likely show there. Another idea might be to use the 'iwconfig' command to modify the "sens" value . If you look in the manual page for iwconfig it says the "sens" (sensitivity threshold) value can be used to fix problems with weak AP's from being dropped too soon. It might be that in your case you would want to reduce the threshold where the wireless card drops your weak AP and tries to find another (which doesn't exist).

[braystacey]

Originally Posted by marko

It might be a good idea to look in your /var/log/wpa_supplicant file If there are problems with the encryption or other security problems they would likely show there. Another idea might be to use the 'iwconfig' command to modify the "sens" value . If you look in the manual page for iwconfig it says the "sens" (sensitivity threshold) value can be used to fix problems with weak AP's from being dropped too soon. It might be that in your case you would want to reduce the threshold where the wireless card drops your weak AP and tries to find another (which doesn't exist).

This seems like a good plan for a weak AP but I don't think that is the issue. Running Mint 12 KDE (NetworkManager v.0.9.1.90-0ubuntu5.1) on the same laptop didn't show any issues and I'll test it with a LiveCD of Ubuntu 12.04 when I get the chance.

This page shows that NetworkManager has had a significant upgrade in Fedora 17 but whether or not this would affect KNetworkManager is up for grabs (they must share a similar codebase right?). I can't find a comprehensive list of package versions on Fedora 17 (can anyone point me to one?) to check what the LiveCD NWM package version is (I'm not with my laptop at the moment).

There is also a similar problem in OpenSuse 12.1 (can't post the URL it seems) so there is a possibility that this might be a KDE issue. I don't know which DE people here are using.

Although not new to Linux (5yrs or so), I wouldn't say I was totally clued up so any help is useful.

Thanks,
Simon.

[Giacobazzi]

Try using a kernel older than the 3.4.x if you didn't removed it.
I'm experiencing the same issue with both Fedora and Archlinux, kernel 3.4 and my ralink rt3070 usb.

[ashtonford]

Originally Posted by Giacobazzi

Try using a kernel older than the 3.4.x if you didn't removed it.
I'm experiencing the same issue with both Fedora and Archlinux, kernel 3.4 and my ralink rt3070 usb.

this works also after spending some time trying to fix the problem with my b43 card (Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01) on HP ProBook 5310m) I found the solution and now the card is working pretty stable.
The problem was that each time 6 seconds after each AP association the connection was dropped with this error in the dmesg:
No probe response from AP xxxxxxxxxxxxx after 500ms, disconnecting
The fix is to disable the QOS of the driver.
sudo touch /etc/modprobe.d/b43.conf
echo "options b43 pio=1 qos=0" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/b43.conf

[braystacey]

I had a similar issue with getting ndiswrapper working with an RALink card in my Samsung N140 and had to regress to an earlier kernel (although that wasn't working at all).

Seems like, for Fedora at least, the 3.4 kernel has been a wireless wash out.

Has anyone tried 3.4.4 released but a few days ago? That promises "updated wireless drivers" which might help here.

Simon.

[braystacey]

Upgraded to kernel 3.4.4 last night and saw an instant improvement. Still not marvellous but around 10-15% higher signal strength in more compromised areas.

Regards,
Simon.