It seems to run well for about 20 seconds, especially after freshly reconnecting. After those 20 seconds are up, it ceases all incoming and outgoing network activity for about two minutes.
This is a fresh install, so there's no chance that something tampered with it to cause any instability. I'm running LMDE Betsy with Cinnamon (downloaded from the site a couple days ago) using the 3.16.0-4-amd64 kernel (now updated to 4.1.0-2-amd64). My WiFi card is a TP-Link TL-WN951N v1 (chipset: AR5416). I'm using a 2.4 GHz 802.11g/n connection with WPA2-AES security.
Here are the details from mintwifi. There was a warning about /etc/resolv.conf not being symlinked to /etc/resolvconf/run/resolv.conf so I deleted the former and symlinked it to the latter.
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* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
-- Qualcomm Atheros AR5416 Wireless Network Adapter [AR5008 802.11(a)bgn] (rev 01)
==> PCI ID = 168c:0023 (rev 01)
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* II. querying ndiswrapper...
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* III. querying iwconfig...
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"wowsuchwifi"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 90:0D:CB:FF:F1:A0
Bit Rate=130 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-36 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:1 Invalid misc:26 Missed beacon:0
lo no wireless extensions.
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* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 50:e5:49:c7:f0:88
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1
RX packets:3857 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3857 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:338937 (330.9 KiB) TX bytes:338937 (330.9 KiB)
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 90:f6:52:36:37:40
inet addr:10.0.0.7 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:78583 errors:0 dropped:444 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:53622 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:77504584 (73.9 MiB) TX bytes:6780983 (6.4 MiB)
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* V. querying DHCP...
Reloading /etc/samba/smb.conf: smbd.
RTNETLINK answers: File exists
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* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
Server: 75.75.75.75
Address: 75.75.75.75#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: google.com
Address: 216.58.217.142
Things I've tried so far:
- Checked various files in /var/log to see if anything fishy came up
- Disabled IPv6 since apparently support for it isn't up to snuff yet
- Given it a static IP address (both on the machine and in the router, for posterity)
- Set the DNS to 8.8.8.8 with mixed results (sometimes I would get 404s, and it still didn't help with the delays)
- Disabled the security (router wouldn't let me use a lesser protocol like WEP); enabled when it didn't help with the delays
- Ensured that ath9k drivers are enabled
- Updated the kernel to 4.1.0-2-amd64
- Set US to the value in /etc/default/crda
- Pushed en-/decryption from the hardware to the software
So far, no dice. The connection doesn't "drop" exactly, it just makes my machine look really lazy by keeping a 0b/s "speed" both in and out. Nothing shows up in any logs that I've found.
I'm stuck and really don't want to have to uninstall it again. What can I do?