Slow Wifi Speeds and odd CPU Spiking MC 17

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Bernie11

Slow Wifi Speeds and odd CPU Spiking MC 17

Post by Bernie11 »

First a little background, I wanted to try out Mint Cinnamon 17 on my Toshiba Satellite laptop but came across a problem with the wireless. During the live session from the USB I couldn't get the wireless to work. It would see my network along with my neighbors but it just wouldn't connect. It would try to connect for like 5-7 seconds then time out saying "Disconnected". I thought it maybe had something to do with the fact that I was running it from the usb, so I went ahead and installed it alongside my windows 7 installation. That didn't fix it. It was still having problems connecting. I connected the Ethernet to it and that worked great. I then downloaded and installed all the updates, rebooted and still the wireless wasn't working.

So, I looked through the forums for an answer and somebody suggested updating the kernel. The kernel that came with the installer was 3.13.0.24. I download and installed kernel 3.13.0.27. That fixed the wireless problem! It booted up and found and connected to my network. But then I did a speedtest and saw it was running slower then when it was wired to the router. Off the Ethernet I was getting download speeds up to 20Mb/s, and on the wireless it was only getting around 10Mb/s. And on top of the slower speeds it was also causing high usage spikes on the CPU. I opened up System Monitor and it was showing one of the cores at a constant 75-80% usage. As soon as I turned off my wireless using FN+F12, the usage on the CPU core would go down to normal ranges. I'll include screen shots. These high spikes weren't there when the Ethernet was connected.

So, I guess what I'm asking is why my wireless is causing these high CPU spikes and slower internet speeds? Any help would be a appreciated. I'm almost 100% sure it's driver related but I wouldn't know where to begin to try and fix it. Everything is working fine in windows 7.

My laptop is a Toshiba satellite C55-A5245
core i3
8gb ram
window 7 64bit (the version of Mint Cinnamon I installed is also the 64bit version)

::SCREENSHOTS::

http://postimg.org/image/whaxz9tlz/
With WiFi enabled, the spikes would alternate between CPU2 and CPU4 but always stay around ~75%.

http://postimg.org/image/6n159htlz/
With WiFI turned off and Ethernet connected. Spikes are gone.

http://postimg.org/image/jv54g6giv/
WiFi speeds

http://postimg.org/image/712h93dpj/
Ethernet speeds

I ran the MintWifi command and this was the result I got while connected with Wifi...

Code: Select all

-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
  -- Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188EE Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
      ==> PCI ID = 10ec:8179 (rev 01)
-------------------------
* II. querying ndiswrapper...
-------------------------
* III. querying iwconfig...
eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"MY Network"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 84:1B:5E:E3:16:8A   
          Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-38 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

-------------------------
* IV. querying ifconfig...
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:8c:fa:a6:af:96  
          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)
          Interrupt:16 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:155 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:155 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:11155 (11.1 KB)  TX bytes:11155 (11.1 KB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 40:f0:2f:ec:9a:e2  
          inet addr:192.168.1.6  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::42f0:2fff:feec:9ae2/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:98 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2177 (2.1 KB)  TX bytes:18436 (18.4 KB)

-------------------------
* V. querying DHCP...
RTNETLINK answers: File exists
-------------------------
* VI. querying nslookup google.com...
Server:		192.168.1.1
Address:	192.168.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.104
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.105
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.101
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.103
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.102
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.98
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.96
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.100
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.110
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.97
Name:	google.com
Address: 74.125.228.99
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Bernie11

Re: Slow Wifi Speeds and odd CPU Spiking MC 17

Post by Bernie11 »

http://postimg.org/image/ti7fpvivr/
Here's another screenshot. This one is of htop. Its showing me that high red spike is kernel related, whatever that means. Any ideas?
PatH57

Re: Slow Wifi Speeds and odd CPU Spiking MC 17

Post by PatH57 »

the kernel upgrade did help a bit not enough.
Try the latest 3.13.11 it brings 198 patches
http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-kernel ... rivatives/
Bernie11

Re: Slow Wifi Speeds and odd CPU Spiking MC 17

Post by Bernie11 »

PatH57 wrote:the kernel upgrade did help a bit not enough.
Try the latest 3.13.11 it brings 198 patches
http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-kernel ... rivatives/
That seemed to help a little with the speeds I was getting on wireless but the CPU spikes remain.
PatH57

Re: Slow Wifi Speeds and odd CPU Spiking MC 17

Post by PatH57 »

sorry but did you install 3.13.11?
Bernie11

Re: Slow Wifi Speeds and odd CPU Spiking MC 17

Post by Bernie11 »

PatH57 wrote:sorry but did you install 3.13.11?
Yes, I did. I ran uname -a in the terminal...

Code: Select all

Linux mikey-Satellite-C55-A 3.13.11-03131105-generic #201407181735 SMP Fri Jul 18 21:35:58 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
PatH57

Re: Slow Wifi Speeds and odd CPU Spiking MC 17

Post by PatH57 »

in this case you can try a newer kernel from the 3.14 serie or 3.15 (3.16 is still release candidat)
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/
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