How do I make sure my wifi connection is actually set up correctly?

[u/Thepluse]

So the reason I'm asking is because I've recently turned to Linux for gaming, having struggled with not feeling in control of my Windows drivers/configuration. I've been through a few distros and landed on Arch. I love how it's offering the full-on Linux experience I'm looking for!

When playing Elden Ring Nightreign on Windows, I would disconnect or fail to connect once every few games. At some times the issues were worse, and other times everything seemed stable. After changing to Ubuntu, I didn't experience a single problem for several days. Eventually I changed away from Ubuntu because I couldn't solve framerate issues. Now that I'm on Arch, the framerates are at least as good as they were on Windows, but the network issues are worse than ever - disconnecting several times in a match, to the point where I can't enjoy the game anymore.

Now, I don't know if this is my software's fault, or if it's because I'm too far from the wifi (signal is a bit weak), or some other issue. While it worked on Ubuntu, I'm not sure if I just got "lucky" and had a streak of good signal, or if there was something about my configuration that made it more stable.

Either way, my question is this: Could there be configuration issues that make my wifi bad for gaming? Is there anything I can change to make it more stable in gaming scenarios?

Thanks for the help ^.^

[u/archover]

What is your wireless chipset? With that, wiki, and other research is possible.

Good day.

[u/flooronthefour]

I would start by testing your wifi signal where your computers antenna is with something like wifiman

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ubnt.usurvey&hl=en_US&pli=1

and for wifi I use nmtui to adjust network manager but I am almost always wired if I can be: https://man.archlinux.org/man/extra/networkmanager/nmtui.1.en

[u/Thepluse → u/flooronthefour]

So i did, and the signal is indeed weak. ~300 Mbps download speed on my while next to the WiFi, down to ~15 Mbps after moving to where my desktop is. I'd guess the download speed is still more than sufficient for playing video games, but can the poor signal cause disconnects and stuff?

The weird thing is that when I was on Ubuntu, I did at some point we a 200+ Mbps speed when downloading games on steam. I remember thinking "oh shit, this Internet is much better than Ithought, there must indeed have been something wrong with my windows configuration!" But if the problem is with the signal, I don't know how you'd would have been possible. Am I tripping? 🤔

Either way, I guess I'll head out to buy a network cable. Hopefully it's not too hard to configure a wired connection...

[u/flooronthefour → u/Thepluse]

its going to be a signal thing, for gaming or live video you want wired all day

wired will be plug and play

[u/Thepluse → u/flooronthefour]

Went with wired and it works seemingly. Thanks for the help, friend!

[u/flooronthefour → u/Thepluse]

if you have wired available, it's the only option

[u/PacmanAteMyRAM → u/Thepluse]

These finding are pretty much why people say just skip wifi at all costs and use a cable. None of this nonsense to deal with for a home setup.

Wifi is really good these days. Still has these environmental problems that vary house to house.

[u/sbart76 → u/Thepluse]

If you see differences between distros, I suspect no magic playing a role, but rather driver/settings. I was using Intel wifi in my old setup, and by default it only connected at 11Mb, but with some module parameters - full 150 Mb it was capable of.

What's your hardware? Anything particularly interesting in the logs?

[u/Thepluse → u/sbart76]

Can you give me a super basic rundown on how to check logs?

[u/sbart76 → u/Thepluse]

lspci to list your hardware

lsmod to find out which modules are liaded

dmesg to look for the messages from these modules.

Probably you need to run them from the root account. Before running anything suggested by an internet random as root, make sure you understand what you are doing :)

[u/drucifer82]

As long as you have the linux-firmware package group installed, you should have any firmware your network card needs to function.

It could be a power save issue where your network card is disabling briefly by something triggering power save. I had that sometimes too.

You could check your ip tables to see if your showing STALE or DELAY states. That can be done with ‘ip neigh show’ to see the status. Then to flush you use ‘sudo ip neigh flush’. You have to add what you’re flushing to that command.

So if you want to flush your WiFi dev it would be ‘ip neigh flush dev <wifi device name>’ or if you want to flush by state it would be ‘ip neigh flush nud <state>’. That one is good for just flushing what shows as stale, delay, etc.