GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 772722
Wireless connection is super-slow on brcmsmac
Last modified: 2017-01-20 16:49:59 UTC
Since version 1.4 forward, wireless connection is limited to 40KiB/s on my BCM4313 (brcmsmac driver). Last known working (over 1.5MiB/s download speed) NM version was 1.2.5-dev. Downgrading kernel didn't help but downgrading NM to version 1.2.4 or 1.2.5 is fixing the issue. So I believe the new NM is communicating differently with wifi driver which causes the massive slowdown. What I tried with no impact on the issue: - setting powersave=0 in wireless profile - running "iwconfig <device> power off", but it says that operation is not supported - When looking to logs (both dmesg and systemd journal) while connecting to router I can see no differences between the tried versions. - blacklisting module b43 Tested on: HP Probook 6550b, wifi BCM4313 (brcmsmac driver), Arch Linux (kernel 4.7.6), NM (various versions: 1.4.0, 1.4.1, 1.4.2) On another laptop with Intel wifi is everything fine. Also ethernet is ok on both laptops. I'll gladly provide more info/data on demand:).
might be related to NetworkManager now changing the MAC address by default. You disable that, by configure that via: [device] wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=0 [connection] 802-11-wireless.cloned-mac-address=permanent followed by `killall -SIG NetworkManager` and trying re-activating the connection (two times, to be sure). Does that help?
Thanks a lot for quick answer! Unfortunately it didn't help. But with more testing performed, I can see the problem is probably partially related to wpa_supplicant. From my latest testing, I can say this: - all testing performed with wifi connection type WPA2 Personal - wpa_supplicant 2.5 + NM <= 1.2.5 -> everything fine - wpa_supplicant 2.5 + NM >= 1.4 -> wifi slow - wpa_supplicant 2.6 + NM <= 1.2.5 -> wifi slow right after boot, everything fine after NM restart - wpa_supplicant 2.6 + NM >= 1.4 -> wifi slow I'll do more testing, check wpa_supplicant logs, ... and report back.
Any progress or change here?
Unfortunately not much. Latest wpa_supplicant and kernel now works fine with NM version less then 1.4. I still didn't figured it out. Today I tried also the latest NM git version. It is possibly the combination of brcmsmac wifi driver vs. NM 1.4+ what's causing the slowness. There is a thread about it on arch forums: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1685087 Changing driver implementation to the broadcom-wl apparently solves the problem. So we can probably mark this issue as kinda resolved. Just one more thought: could there be some updated/new kernel API that is called by NM since version 1.4.0? That would probably narrow down the problematic area.
Not that I can think of. one thing that changed is that NetworkManager now might eagerly try to reset a different MAC address. That could result in driver issues. But that is configurable, and you said disabling that, didn't help (which rules that out). You would easily see if NM does it with turning on debug-logging and grepping for "set-hw-addr:". I was thinking maybe it's related to powersave. If you have powesave enabled, I would disable it and see if it helps. Closing for lack of ideas. Please reopen if something new shows up. Thanks!