Wifi dropping when connecting to a access point with 5ghz and wifi 6

[Vain]

my wifi constantly drops when connecting to my router access point that has both 5ghz and wifi 6 support. Its basically unuseable.

[Shattered mind]

geez... IT SURE WOULD BE NICE WITH SOME ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ OFFICIAL FEEDBACK ON THIS ISSUE WHICH HAS EXISTED SINCE LAUNCH AND IS NOW A 11 PAGE THREAD! Valve wtf are you doing!?

[TheKerevas]

I solved it by putting the router/access point 5GHz WiFi bandwidth from 80/160 MHz to 20 or 40 MHz. This obviously makes the WiFi go slower for all devices, but finally my Steam Deck connects to 5GHz and is stable

[mattelko]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von autoexec04:

Here's a reddit post where a user tried installing an alternate driver, with some reported success. I never got around to trying yet, but if anyone else has a chance, maybe try this and report back?:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/whdxhf/rtl88x2cedkms_possible_new_fix_for_wifi_dropping/

This alternative driver works fine for me.
Just finished 8GB update for DL2 and I was able to hit 46MB/s download speed. There was no disconnect and it looks to be stable so far.

[bad1080]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von mattelko:

This alternative driver works fine for me.
Just finished 8GB update for DL2 and I was able to hit 46MB/s download speed. There was no disconnect and it looks to be stable so far.

does this get wiped and thus has to be redone with every update to the steam os?

[Unimpossible]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von mattelko:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von autoexec04:

Here's a reddit post where a user tried installing an alternate driver, with some reported success. I never got around to trying yet, but if anyone else has a chance, maybe try this and report back?:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/whdxhf/rtl88x2cedkms_possible_new_fix_for_wifi_dropping/

This alternative driver works fine for me.
Just finished 8GB update for DL2 and I was able to hit 46MB/s download speed. There was no disconnect and it looks to be stable so far.

Keep us updated, I was considering trying it myself.

I'm hoping this is the solution.

[autoexec04]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von autoexec04:

Here's a reddit post where a user tried installing an alternate driver, with some reported success. I never got around to trying yet, but if anyone else has a chance, maybe try this and report back?:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/whdxhf/rtl88x2cedkms_possible_new_fix_for_wifi_dropping/

Just got around to trying this tonight, and the results look good so far!

Downloading a 35GB game on my Steam Deck, speeds hovering around 15-17MB/s, zero drops to 0kb/s, zero disconnects, no need to toggle my wifi off/on to reconnect and try again.

I have no idea whether this will need to be "reapplied" after a Steam OS update or not, but essentially I just followed the linked post, with a few notes:

- Running "pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring" got some sort of failure, but it seemed like it already existed so I moved on with the rest of the commands

- I also ran "sudo btrfs property set -ts / ro false" from another post, in case it was needed (i'm pretty sure "steamos-readonly disable" does the same exact thing, so probably not necessary)

- instead of "pacman --init" and "pacman --populate", I ran "pacman-key --init" and "pacman-key --populate archlinux"

[owczyped]

I also suffer from wifi drops on 5ghz network. As soon as game download starts deck drops wifi and says it can't reach steam servers. Then need to restart wifi.
Throttling download speed through settings to around 100 000 kb/s (~12MB/s) helps. This allows to keep steady connection but at the cost of speed.

What is interesting is that when I download large files not through steam the connection is stable. 6GB file on local network share downloaded through wifi keeps steady 50-60MB/s without any wifi drops. On stock drivers.

Hope this helps narrow down a problem.

[autoexec04]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von autoexec04:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von autoexec04:

Here's a reddit post where a user tried installing an alternate driver, with some reported success. I never got around to trying yet, but if anyone else has a chance, maybe try this and report back?:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/whdxhf/rtl88x2cedkms_possible_new_fix_for_wifi_dropping/

Just got around to trying this tonight, and the results look good so far!

Downloading a 35GB game on my Steam Deck, speeds hovering around 15-17MB/s, zero drops to 0kb/s, zero disconnects, no need to toggle my wifi off/on to reconnect and try again.

I have no idea whether this will need to be "reapplied" after a Steam OS update or not, but essentially I just followed the linked post, with a few notes:

- Running "pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring" got some sort of failure, but it seemed like it already existed so I moved on with the rest of the commands

- I also ran "sudo btrfs property set -ts / ro false" from another post, in case it was needed (i'm pretty sure "steamos-readonly disable" does the same exact thing, so probably not necessary)

- instead of "pacman --init" and "pacman --populate", I ran "pacman-key --init" and "pacman-key --populate archlinux"

Just as FYI - installed the recent SteamOS update and this did indeed get reverted back to the old/original driver. Spent 10 minutes to re-do the steps from the reddit post I linked before, and appear to be back in business (OP has since updated his instructions, so you can just follow along without my notes above).

[Joseph Stalin]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Joseph Stalin:

Same issue here.
New deck, one week old, issue present since first boot. Used Beta and Preview (actually had no usable internet on Preview, showed connected).

Using a Netgear AC2600. No issue on other devices at times of disconnect. Disconnects happen often when in use and last around 20-30 sec. Issue is present on both 2.4 AND 5GHz connections regardless of disabling Band Steering and Wifi Power Management on the deck.

Tried separating 5 and 2.4GHz SSIDs, enabled and disabled MU-MIMO, Airtime Fairness, 20/40 MHz coexistence, Beam Forming, and Band Steering. No luck...

Just got a new Deck, my last one had an unrelated issue that required RMA.

Wifi problems persist. I've resorted to using a wireless hotspot from my phone to the Deck. Sucks, but seems the only solution for now.

[Eternity Circle]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Joseph Stalin:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Joseph Stalin:

Same issue here.
New deck, one week old, issue present since first boot. Used Beta and Preview (actually had no usable internet on Preview, showed connected).

Using a Netgear AC2600. No issue on other devices at times of disconnect. Disconnects happen often when in use and last around 20-30 sec. Issue is present on both 2.4 AND 5GHz connections regardless of disabling Band Steering and Wifi Power Management on the deck.

Tried separating 5 and 2.4GHz SSIDs, enabled and disabled MU-MIMO, Airtime Fairness, 20/40 MHz coexistence, Beam Forming, and Band Steering. No luck...

Just got a new Deck, my last one had an unrelated issue that required RMA.

Wifi problems persist. I've resorted to using a wireless hotspot from my phone to the Deck. Sucks, but seems the only solution for now.

Had same issues with Phone hotspot strangely...
The option in Deck to disable power management help a little.

[Dragon Protector]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Joseph Stalin:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Joseph Stalin:

Same issue here.
New deck, one week old, issue present since first boot. Used Beta and Preview (actually had no usable internet on Preview, showed connected).

Using a Netgear AC2600. No issue on other devices at times of disconnect. Disconnects happen often when in use and last around 20-30 sec. Issue is present on both 2.4 AND 5GHz connections regardless of disabling Band Steering and Wifi Power Management on the deck.

Tried separating 5 and 2.4GHz SSIDs, enabled and disabled MU-MIMO, Airtime Fairness, 20/40 MHz coexistence, Beam Forming, and Band Steering. No luck...

Just got a new Deck, my last one had an unrelated issue that required RMA.

Wifi problems persist. I've resorted to using a wireless hotspot from my phone to the Deck. Sucks, but seems the only solution for now.

I guess I am lucky as wifi works fine and stays connected on my end.

Though after a few weeks I think it stops connecting and or a week. Only fix is to reboot my router.

[Suisse]

Same issue, even with beta OS / client.

Random network disconnections.

Disabling and enabling wifi on steamdeck helps for a while.

I can confirm that this issue is only Steam Deck related in my network. Otherwise 100% stable

[Marlock]

check the workarounds I posted earlier in this thread, they should help you get by without disconnects and etc while Valve works on the issue

[cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

I'm the alternate driver guy from reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/whdxhf/rtl88x2cedkms_possible_new_fix_for_wifi_dropping/

My fix isn't perfect, and like some users mentioned, it breaks wifi when you put the deck to sleep, and it goes away when you do a steamdeck OS update. But it does seem to fix the "disconnection" issue, so choose your poison I guess...

So far the issue with the default rt88 driver as I see it:
SD connects to 5Ghz network capable of surpasing ~120mb/s (15MBps)
Device starts downloading something at high speeds ~120mb/s
Wi-Fi seems to drop out, download stops, SD claims to not be able to connect to Steam servers
BT status doesn't matter, on, off, connected, whatever (relevant due to BTCoex)
When digging around in desktop mode, the network is connected, you have an IP, but cannot ping in or out
As another user mentioned,
* the SD will respond to ARP requests coming from systems on the same broadcast domain, so it seems that broadcast packets are still processed by the SD and it is able to successfully send out ARP responses via unicast packets
* the SD will *not* receive ARP responses from other systems on the same broadcast domain; the SD successfully sends out the broadcast ARP request and the remote systems respond with unicast ARP responses, but these unicast packets aren't processed by the SD

So it seems like a driver fix is possible for devices experiencing this issue since that other driver exists: jupiter/rtl88x2ce-dkms, which Valve are packaging, I didn't just pull that out of my butt it's in their pacman repos. This is reassuring since it should mean it can be fixed without total RMAs.

Let me know if you've experienced this issue at speeds below what I've said, or if you've experienced it when totally idle. So far in my experience debugging it happens only when downloading large games or flatpak updates, I have ethernet dongles and other means of copying data so it's not a huge deal.

As a workaround for me limiting steam downloads to 120mb/s or setting a rate limit on your AP works too.

My info:
AP: Ruckus R700 5Ghz and 450mb/s WAN Uplink
Local Steam Cache (tried with and without)
Bluetooth (tried on and off)
Latest Beta Build as of 10/23/2022 (Build: 20221003.100)

Silly issue and I totally agree valve pooped the bed when they picked Realtek, anyone who's used Linux for a while would cringe when they hear Realtek... This whole ordeal has triggered my Ndiswrapper PTSD.

[Suisse]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Marlock:

check the workarounds I posted earlier in this thread, they should help you get by without disconnects and etc while Valve works on the issue

thx
The question is: is Valve aware of that issue?