Network connection is lost after every few minutes

Question

During the startup a wifi connection is established and everything works fine.

After a while, the connection disappears suddenly.

To fix this i do, sudo service network-manager restart and then my connection is up. But the same problems happens after a while.

I am not sure what is the issue with the wifi-driver.

system info:

$ sudo lshw -C network
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: Wireless 3165
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
       logical name: wlp5s0
       version: 79
       serial: 08:d4:0c:ac:d0:6e
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=5.4.0-73-generic firmware=29.1654887522.0 ip=192.168.0.8 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
       resources: irq:136 memory:df200000-df201fff

$ uname -r
5.4.0-73-generic

$ cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS"

Also there is a question mark on the wifi icon. So, it more looks like a DNS issue. Also i noticed that sometimes a few sites open and sometimes none of the sites work.

This is really annoying problem and any fix is very appreciated.

There seems to be a similar issue here: Wireless connection fails every few minutes

But the accepted solution there does not work for me. The root cause could be different. Many places this issue is reported but never there had been a fully working solution. Hopefully we could fix it here!

Answer 1

Your wireless may be dropping because of power management; that is, the feature where the card partially powers down to save battery power during periods of inactivity and then, ideally, powers back up seamlessly when activity resumes. Let's disable power saving to see if it helps. From the terminal:

sudo sed -i 's/3/2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/*

Your wireless may be dropping because the channel to which it was connected has suddenly changed.

Please check the settings in the router. WPA2-AES is preferred; not any WPA and WPA2 mixed mode and certainly not TKIP. Second, if your router is capable of N speeds, you may have better connectivity with a channel width of 20 MHz in the 2.4 GHz band instead of automatic 20/40 MHz, although it is likely to affect N speeds. I recommend a fixed channel, either 1, 6 or 11, rather than automatic channel selection. Also, be certain the router is not set to use N speeds only; auto B, G and N is preferred.

Your wireless may be dropping because there are two wireless access points with the same name and password. This is typical when you have a 2.4 gHz segment and a 5 gHz segment of the same router. Your wireless may be roaming, looking for a better connection. If this is the case, I suggest that you rename the access points; something like myrouter2.4 and myrouter5.

After making these changes, reboot the router.

Next, I recommend that your regulatory domain be set explicitly. Check yours:

sudo iw reg get

If you get 00, that is a one-size-maybe-fits-all setting. Find yours here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 Then set it temporarily:

sudo iw reg set IS

Of course, substitute your country code if not Iceland. Set it permanently:

sudo nano /etc/default/crda

Change the last line to read:

REGDOMAIN=IS

Proofread carefully, save and close the text editor.

Is there any improvement?

Answer 2

sudo vim /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf

Disable WiFi power management .

wifi.powersave = 2

---

sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager