Alright, I spent many hours messing with this, I found the mostly solution. It is 'mostly' because it doesn't fix the problem, but it does give you a usable stable connection at acceptable speeds. You need to do two steps, not just one.
Testing done via iperf3.
Before: 2-540Mbps, averaging 1-14Mbps.
After: 180-260Mbps, averaging 180-250Mbps.
Step 1: The fix mentioned by <lost it>, credit to Novel_Nose8497
There are a slew of bugs open on the kernel.org bugzilla for this issue , and alas I don't recall my source for this information, but my understanding is that this bug happens AX200/201/210(?) Wifi 6 Linux iwlwifi drivers. This may be a good place to start:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203709
In a nutshell, the bug is technically due to the way that Wifi 6 access points (in my case Netgear WAX210/630) handle beacons. The kernel developers involved seem to concur that the iwlwifi implementation is technically correct, so they have not attempted to fix things on the driver side (as far as I know). That said, the Windows drivers have been updated to compensate for this access point bug b/c they correctly recognize that users rarely have control over the AP they are connecting to.
With that said, the best solution that I have found is to disable the 802.11ax standard in iwlwifi so that my Linux laptops connect using 802.11ac, which is still fast. The 802.11ac connection is stable all day long. So, if you're desperate, try this:
```
~$ sudo su -
~$ touch /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf
~$ echo "options iwlwifi disable_11ax=Y" >> /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf
~$ reboot```
This has worked for me on both Arch Linux and Ubuntu 22.04. Hope that helps.
This is the first time this method worked for me. I had found it before, actually, but this method adds it with NO leading spaces. I would think this just an aesthetic or parsing thing, when I tried this before it said to add four leading spaces like I've seen in other .conf files and didn't work. Here's mine link
Explanation: Drivers are borked. AX (wifi 6) doesn't work properly on the card, but everything up to wifi 5 is stable. Usually wifi 6 is much faster, so it keeps picking the wifi 6 connection. It maybe also be possible to just disable wifi 6 (11ax) on your router. I read that somewhere, but didn't attempt it because I'm not the only user on my connection.
That gets you to a stable connection. Now,
Step 2: Double your power with this one little trick, credit to reivilibre & Dougie
I had this issue (slow data rates: 3 Mbps down, 0.4 Mbps up through WiFi, which didn't occur on other devices on my network), though I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 (KDE neon specifically).
I followed the steps from the other answer, but in the end, what seemed to make all the difference for me was to disable 'power save' mode on my wifi adapter.
root@lithium:/home/rei# iw dev wlp4s0 get power_save Power save: on root@lithium:/home/rei# iw dev wlp4s0 set power_save off root@lithium:/home/rei# iw dev wlp4s0 get power_save Power save: off I'm not sure if power saver is meant to be so aggressive -- perhaps there's another bug there, but disabling it allowed me to work around the problem.
Hope this helps someone.
The only problem is that the setting needs to be called per boot. That's where Dougie comes to save the day.
I did it by simply adding a line to /etc/rc.local
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 power off
Add that ahead of exit 0
and it will run at every boot.
tl;dr
- sudo iw dev to get your wireless interface like this mine is wlp3s0 but yours will likely be different.
- sudo nano /etc/rc.local and set it up like this with your wireless interface instead of wlp3s0, you also need the bash bit at the start and exit 0 at the end or it won't work.
- Restart the computer for it to take affect & check it.
- sudo iw dev <interface> get power_save and it should be off like this
Explanation: Power settings for the driver are also brok. The rc.local stuff is so it loads the fix on boot.
Works on my machine™️Debian 12.4 with an intel AX200NGW.
Obviously you can find the bits and peaces like I did. This is an attempt to make it dead simple for other people. I found out the speeds were terrible with iperf3, went through the router, eventually stumbled upon it being the wifi card, finally found some fixes, then found a working fix, found the second fix, set it all up, and now I am just thankful it is over.
P.S. I read a comment in a thread about the new 6.7 Linux Kernel saying that the connectivity issues for the cards AX200(NGW)/201/210 are gone. If you are reading this comment far in the future there is a chance that it was fixed in 6.7 and your distro might have a new enough kernel for this to not be a problem. Maybe I am being naive.
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