[SOLVED] Connection keeps dropping with Broadcom BCM4313

Question

Hi,
I recently installed Arch, and since the problems I had with wireless in Ubuntu still occurred, I went to the wiki.
It told me that brcmsmac is the driver I need, and it's included in the kernel. My wireless card is:
prakhar@sim74stic ~ $ lspci -vnn | grep 14e4:
0a:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
The problem is, for most APs and Connectify, and my old g router, this driver works perfectly. But I recently bought a newer D-Link 850L router, and I am having a lot of trouble connecting to that:
It connects after multiple timeouts (below).
The speed is typically 1mb/s to 43 mb/s.
It abruptly disconnects and doesn't connect again, even weakly, until reboot.
For debugging:
My android connects to the router perfectly.
I have tried the wiki options, like blacklisting b43.
When I reboot, sometimes, the connection is perfect, max speed n, otherwise, most of the time it's sluggish 1mb/s and disconnects after some time .
This is the dmesg log (repeated multiple times):
[ 943.695234] wlp10s0: direct probe to <mac removed> (try 1/3)
[ 943.898191] wlp10s0: direct probe to <mac removed> (try 2/3)
[ 944.101418] wlp10s0: direct probe to <mac removed> (try 3/3)
[ 944.304643] wlp10s0: authentication with <mac removed> timed out
Even with a perfect connection, this timeout occurs.
Here's all the loaded drivers:
prakhar@sim74stic ~ $ lsmod |grep br
brcmsmac 532342 0
cordic 12352 1 brcmsmac
brcmutil 13093 1 brcmsmac
mac80211 514630 1 brcmsmac
cfg80211 454161 2 brcmsmac,mac80211
bcma 45870 2 brcmsmac
led_class 12859 2 brcmsmac,hp_accel
If I allow b43 to load, this still occurs.
I have tried configuring my router as b, g, n, g/n, b/g/n, and the result is always the same.
On Ubuntu, I tried the broadcom-sta-dkms, and that gave me a good connection, but the networking didn't occurr ie, all hosts (including DNS) were unreachble, even with a correct routing table.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
I have not tried to install/remove any drivers. These are all vanilla linux kernel drivers.
Last edited by prakharsingh95 (2014-10-03 22:02:34)

Answer 1

Kopkins wrote:
I can't seem to connect to the wiki right now to dig around some more, but try setting packet fragmentation for your wireless interface to something higher. By default it's off.
iw phy # gives you the phy of your interface, probably phy0 at the very top of output
sudo iw phy0 set frag 2346
Sorry, didn't help. I verified that it was indeed modifying bu running iw list again.
Also, using lspci -v, I see:
0a:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 1795
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
Memory at d4500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number <removed>
Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
Kernel modules: bcma
Kernel modules: bcma. Shouldn't it be using brcmsmac?