[SOLVED] Extremly poor Wifi performance with Qualcomm Atheros chip

[Thomas00]

The Realtech question in the previous thread prompted me to look into an issue I have with my wifes laptop from day one.
When checking wifi settings I see that tx bitrate is only 6.0 Mbit/s no matter if on 5GHz or 2.4GHz, where my laptop next to it shows 866.7 Mbit/s on the same networks.

Ran a dmesg | grep Ath which gave me 3 errors regarding files not able to load. One of the three was related to a firmware version 6 not found and when checking /lib/firmware/ath10k... I saw that this directory only contained version 5.
So I went out searching for v6 and found it here https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/...th10k/firmware
Copied v6 into the driver folder, reboot and it looks like it was successfully loaded, at least dmesg shows api 6 to be active instead of the previous error.

5.577456] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/pre-cal-pci-0000:01:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[    5.577466] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/cal-pci-0000:01:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[    5.578980] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: qca9377 hw1.1 target 0x05020001 chip_id 0x003821ff sub 17aa:0901
[    5.578982] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: kconfig debug 0 debugfs 1 tracing 1 dfs 0 testmode 0
[    5.579385] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: firmware ver WLAN.TF.2.1-00021-QCARMSWP-1 api 6 features wowlan,ignore-otp crc32 42e41877
[    5.644836] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: board_file api 2 bmi_id N/A crc32 8aedfa4a

So far so good, the other two were not part of the package and the transfer rate did not improve, still 6Mbit/s only
I couldn't find anything on the other two missing drivers but stumbled over a references to this https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source...mware/1.157.21 which I believe us the list of proprietary drivers for Ubuntu? Anyway, the driver in there is the older firmware v5.

So I wonder what to do next, is the driver story maybe a dead end and I rather need to change a setting? Would booting a live USB OS with a distribution known to use the most recent kernel an option, just to see if something more current gives me a better connection? If so, which one should I go for?

One more thing I noticed, the driver package I got v6 from had 3 options. I went with the one higlighted, simply because it had the highest number not because I knew what I was doing :-)
From dmesg and the lshw output below I can see that it was successfully loaded though.
Also not sure what the TF1.0 and CNSS folders are about, in any case the firmware file in those is v5.

iw dev wlp1s0 link
Connected to 2e:30:33:d9:6c:51 (on wlp1s0)
SSID: 235cdc5GWZ
freq: 5220
RX: 1136647 bytes (5482 packets)
TX: 166113 bytes (773 packets)
signal: -58 dBm
tx bitrate: 6.0 MBit/s

bss flags: short-slot-time
dtim period: 2
beacon int: 100

sudo lshw -C network
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
logical name: wlp1s0
version: 31
serial: 30:d1:6b:f5:e3:d3
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath10k_pci driverversion=4.15.0-42-generic firmware=WLAN.TF.2.1-00021-QCARMSWP-1 ip=175.0.0.91 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:136 memory:b1000000-b11fffff

Almost forgot, it's a Lenovo Ideapd 330S with Kubuntu 18.04

[jglen490]

The Realtech question in the previous thread prompted me to look into an issue I have with my wifes laptop from day one.
When checking wifi settings I see that tx bitrate is only 6.0 Mbit/s no matter if on 5GHz or 2.4GHz, where my laptop next to it shows 866.7 Mbit/s on the same networks.

...

So, what chip is in your laptop?

Really, the difference could be anything: chip, antenna, driver, sun spots, aluminum foil, ...

With my desktop (Kubuntu 18.04) I went through about four different USB connected Wifi devices before settling on a big beautiful, twin antenna of a beast that sits on top of the case at the end of an extension cable with both antennas directly facing the Wifi router in the next room. No fails, great speeds!!

But to attack your problem, what chip is in your laptop?

[SpecialEd]

I had to stop using a wireless mouse with my Acer because it interfered with the wifi signal. The ways of the wifi signal are very capricious indeed.

[Thomas00]

But to attack your problem, what chip is in your laptop?

Not sure, the cli commands above gave me this:
QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Qualcomm Atheros

I understand that there are lots of things which affect wifi, but we are both sitzing next to each other and she get‘s a consistent 6Mbit while mine is a 100 times faster? Got zo be a driver thing I‘d say? I could try to boot Windows via USB just to see what the hardware is capable of...

[jglen490]

So you both have the same wifi chip in your respective laptops?

Please run

inxi -n

in each computer, and post the results for each - separately - here.

[Thomas00]

So you both have the same wifi chip in your respective laptops?

Definitely not, all this is meant to say is that I am dealing with a Wifi router which is technically capable of delivering up to 800Mbit/s, and that all devices but one operate in this speed range at that location.
The previous Laptop (Windows 10) worked, the 5 year and older laptops of my sons work with decent performance and I just tried my Android phone which reports 384Mbit/s. A lot lower yes, but not by a factor of 100 and perfectly in the "good enough/won't bother" category for me.
I would absolutely expect variances like this due to different chip sets, laptop build, antenna position etc., but a constant 6Mbit/s with a 2018 laptop immediately led me to look into software (configuration, driver version, router) rather than hardware, I may be wrong.
Meanwhile I also tried two other Wifi routers, different network, brands and age = constant 6Mbit/s

Her machine:

kathrin@KathrinLaptop:~$ inxi -n
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath10k_pci
       IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: 30:d1:6b:f5:e3:d3
       Card-2: Atheros
       IF: null-if-id state: N/A speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: N/A

Similar to what lshw -C network reported in my initial post, but two cards? Maybe the chip comes with a LAN port which the laptop doesn't expose.

For completeness sake, my machine:

thomas@hermes:~$ inxi -n
Network:   Device-1: Intel Ethernet I219-LM driver: e1000e 
         IF: enp0s31f6 state: down mac: d4:81:d7:90:9f:c6 
         Device-2: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi 
         IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: 28:16:ad:52:c8:12

By the way, I used this https://en.avm.de/products/fritzapps/fritzapp-wlan/ to measure my Wifi speed from Android, in case someone's ever looking for something similar.

[jglen490]

The router's delivery capability can be thought of as the max speed on the network. The wifi chip on any given machine in the network of connected machines could have different speed rates based on how the wifi card is made as well as the driver available for that chip. It's not just the chip, it's the quality of the wifi card and it's circuits, antenna, connection to the PC, software, etc.

So, you have two PCs/laptops that are working differently, and that happens, a lot ... . That's why I went through several different wifi dongles before I found the Panda unit with the two big antennas, and it works very well.

[Thomas00]

So, you have two PCs/laptops that are working differently, and that happens, a lot ... . That's why I went through several different wifi dongles before I found the Panda unit with the two big antennas, and it works very well.

Thanks jglen490, let's put it that way, I have 5+ devices (including phones and tablets of the kids) which behave as expected and the most recent device by age and specs behaves like it only supports a 20 year old wifi standard. To me this indicates wrong driver or setup and the chip-set operating in some sort of least common denominator mode.

I don't think I can sell a dongle with antennas to my wife, and actually also not to myself. This laptop ships with a 802.11ac chip-set hence it should produce different results.
To prove or disprove my assumption I'll go through these steps now:
1. try the most recent distro/kernel from a USB drive
2. Install a windows drive
3. Return the laptop
If either 1 or two give good performance I know it's not hardware...

Update
I went and followed through my plan above and the results support my assumption:
Ubuntu 19.04 5GHz 6Mbit/s
Ubuntu 19.04 2.4GHz 1Mbit/s
Manjaro 5GHz 6Mbit/s
Windows 10 5GHz 150Mbit/s

While 150 Mbit/s isn't great compared to what the others deliver it's sufficient. I installed the Win10 driver from the Lenovo site, just in case but still 150 Mbit/s.
As far as Linux is concerned I went with the daily build for 19.04 thinking that this is the most recent kernel, turned out what's in this build is older than what I have. Went and downloaded Manjaro and got kernel 4.19.03 but unfortunately also only 6Mbits.

Well, looks like I bought the wrong laptop :-(
Now I need to decide if I...
- spend more time trying to figure out the driver (version or settings), maybe I check the Lenovo forums
- buy a USB wifi dongle
- migrate to Windows

Think I will have to have a chat with my wife...

By the way, I was playing around with the Manjaro installer while I was running the live system. Looks like I'd be able to chose btrfs together with encryption which I can't do with Kubuntu as per some other thread I opened here. Feeling tempted :-)
If anyone who knows both platforms happens to be around I'd appreciate a quick comment regarding if this is a good idea for someone who's only worked with Kubuntu/Neon up to now. :-)
Also need to read up on the threads where people are running multiple OSs next to each other on btrfs

Final update

Received a hint to this one:

tx rate is reported as 6mbps due to firmware limitation (no tx rate information in tx completions); instead see /sys/kernel/debug/ieee80211/phyX/ath10k/fw_stats

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/ath10k

Oops? Went ahead and did an actual test with speedtest-cli and...

Testing download speed...
Download: 200.84 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed...
Upload: 18.81 Mbit/s

I feel a little embarrassed as it looks like I was chasing windmills
My wife was complaining about "slow internet" and when I checked I saw the wrong connection speed and the network manager chart showed very low throughput. But that may have been the internet uplink which was slow for some reason which happens to us every now and then. And then after I found the firmware error messages I was firmly on the wrong track.

Lesson learned, don't always trust what the system says but measure. Thanks to those who helped me arrive at this conclusion!

[yadron]

Solved similar problem for QCA9377, Linux, very slow WiFi connections, with drops

the most recent device by age and specs behaves like it only supports a 20 year old wifi standard.
To me this indicates wrong driver or setup and the chip-set operating in some sort of least common denominator mode.

..

Well, looks like I bought the wrong laptop :-(

..

The discussion of this forum being searchable with words "QCA9377, Linux, slow connections, wifi", so please allow me dumping related info how I solved similar problem.
It taken me one year to resolve it..

It looks like there are few problems that I found:

1. Incorrect implementation inside chip QCA9377 of something (so even if you update kernel / driver, it can help sometimes, but both doesn't resolve the problem with some routers).

2. Incorrect behaviour of router (then need to update configuration of router or change router if doesn't help).

For my router VTech NB403 (Bezeq) I had to change the default "802.11ng, 2.4GHz, 20 MHz" to "802.11b, 2.4GHz".

Originally I had notebook Lenovo E570 that worked very slow with particular WiFi (from user point of view it made some connections being dead for some moments like cannot use gmail and so on). Other devices work well. Diagnostics I did:

1. Tried wire connection and it works fast. Means that something wrong with WiFi (both I see that download speed for WiFi good and upload slow or dead).

2. Updated my Linux to latest, both updated "firmware-atheros" for my "Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 31)", but it didn't help.

3. After some digging, found IP 10.0.0.138 of my router (Bezeq in Israel) and login password default Admin Admin (first is capital) and then tried different confs and the only working I found is "802.11b, 2.4GHz".

Results: now WiFi works perfect (similar upload/download speed like if using wire for this notebook).

Both as result of OS update, I have latest kernel 5 instead of 4 (however updating kernel and drivers doesn't solve the problem at all, so after trying everything with notebook/OS itself I had to dig into router).

It is still a question why it worked so bad before, but looks like something bad with firmware of "Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377" and something bad with firmware of router. I've seen other similar messages on other forums that for some other routers need to change to "20 MHz" and only then starts working with QCA9377.

Note that before solving this issue, I used to connect by WiFi to modem of cell-phone and it worked perfect, so it proofs again that most often this is problem of QCA9377 plus router.