Realtek 8723AE driver works badly

Question

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So my wireless card works. At home, it would work nicely on both Windows 8 and Ubuntu, with a very steady, sustained connection. However, now that university started, I'm in a hub with much more traffic, and the connection is exceedingly choppy. My old laptop had no issues in that hum (I sit litterally at the same desk).

So here are a few things:

morphheus@nyx:~$ cat /etc/*-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS"

morphheus@nyx:~$ lspci | grep Network
05:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723AE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter


morphheus@nyx:~$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"wpa.mcgill.ca"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:1A:1E:DE:3E:43   
          Bit Rate=18 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=52/70  Signal level=-58 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:329   Missed beacon:0


morphheus@nyx:~$ modprobe -l | grep rtl -i
kernel/drivers/tty/serial/uartlite.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8180/rtl8180.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187/rtl8187.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtlwifi.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl_pci.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl_usb.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8192c/rtl8192c-common.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8192ce/rtl8192ce.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8192cu/rtl8192cu.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8192se/rtl8192se.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8192de/rtl8192de.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8723ae/rtl8723ae.ko
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8188ee/rtl8188ee.ko
kernel/drivers/net/usb/rtl8150.ko
kernel/drivers/media/usb/dvb-usb-v2/dvb-usb-rtl28xxu.ko
kernel/drivers/media/dvb-frontends/rtl2830.ko
kernel/drivers/media/dvb-frontends/rtl2832.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8187se/r8187se.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8192u/r8192u_usb.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8192e/rtllib.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8192e/rtllib_crypt_ccmp.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8192e/rtllib_crypt_tkip.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8192e/rtllib_crypt_wep.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8192e/rtl8192e/r8192e_pci.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8712/r8712u.ko
kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8188eu/r8188eu.ko
kernel/drivers/platform/x86/ibm_rtl.ko

morphheus@nyx:~$ lspci -v
05:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723AE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
    Subsystem: AzureWave Device 2114
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
    I/O ports at c000 [size=256]
    Memory at f7800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: rtl8723ae
    Kernel modules: rtl8723ae

The signal strength is very similar to what I had on my old laptop, but it fluctuates a damn lot. One thing I realize is that while the wireless rtl8723ae driver is loaded, I don't see any 8723 driver loaded for the PCI card.

Again, the connection works in a quiet area, but is horrible in a busy area. Reports on internet is that the card itself is just bad design, and I should get a new one.

Before I go and change my wireless card with my old laptop's (or a new one if it's incompatible), does anyone have an idea on how I could stabilize my wireless connection?

Many thanks

Answer 1

Try playing around with the rts and the frag parameters for iwconfig on wlan0. Those parameters are for adapting to noisy environments. You probably are set to the max for rts, so that means it is disabled (see the man pages, man iwconfig). Select a lower value for rts, and make the frag one less than that. For example, picking two random values (try several yourself):

sudo iwconfig wlan0 rts 250
sudo iwconfig wlan0 frag 249