Wireless very slow on another qubes machine - how to investigate

User Support
1

I’m using 4.2.3 on an Rog Strix and everthing seems to work fine.
Here, the internet over Wifi is between 200-300Mbs

I just received a new laptop (Thinkpad E16 Gen 2) and even if it has support for WiFi 6 the speed, same location, same SSID, the internet speed doesn’t go above 60Mbs (max, usually below 40Mbs)

Why is that and how can I investigate as I’m pretty sure is Qubes related
(I’ll create an USB Bootable Stick with Ubuntu and try with that as well to see if the speed will go higher …)

Regards,

2

Are you looking at using Tor or Whonix in speed case?

3

ISP on both cases

4

What are the WiFi models in both laptops?
Maybe try to use newer kernel /firmware.

5

Just tried from an USB stick with Ubuntu and worked perfectly fine on Thinkpad as well.

On the rog strix I have a Wi-Fi 6(802.11ax) (here the internet is working good)
On Thinkpad E16 Gen 2 I have 802.11 ax 2x2 (here the internet from Qubes OS is extremely slow)

6

What template and kernel version do you use for sys-net?
What kernel version did you have in Ubuntu?

Post specific models.
Check the output of this command in dom0:

lspci -nn

And post the VID:PID of your PCI WiFi controller, it should be at the end of the line in brackets [XXXX:XXXX].

7

Kernel version is same on both Qubes laptops: 6.11.2

VID:PID on Thinkpad is 8086:7e40
VID:PID on Rog Strix is 8086:06f0

Kernel on Ubuntu don’t know exactly I’ll need to boot again from USB so give me some minutes please as I’m using this new laptop for work :slight_smile:

For sys-net using fedora-minimal 40 (same on both Qubes laptops)

8

Uh … so … on sys-net on laptop where the internet is better the kernel version is 6.6.54

9

It’s not showing the wireless controller directly, check the Subsystem string in the lspci -vnn output e.g.:

[user@sys-net-huawei ~]$ lspci -s "00:07.0" -vnnn
00:07.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH CNVi WiFi [8086:06f0]
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz [8086:0074]
	Physical Slot: 7
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 5
	Memory at f2028000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>

Try the same stable kernel for a test.

10

I’ll try reinstalling the Qubes OS w/o using latest kernel
I did so as I had an issue with sys-net and wasn’t able to login but I know how to solve it now

I’ll came back later if this will solve the problem as the gui - browsers, vscode … - is slower as well and don’t like that at all while working)

11

There is no need to reinstall the Qubes OS just to use different kernel.
You can install the stable kernel packages in dom0 if you don’t have them available:
Install the stable kernel for qubes:

sudo qubes-dom0-update kernel-qubes-vm

To change the default kernel for all qubes you can set it in Qubes Global Settings.
Or you can just change it in the sys-net Settings.

Install the stable kernel for dom0:

sudo qubes-dom0-update kernel

To boot dom0 with stable kernel you need to select the GRUB boot menu entry with this kernel at Qubes OS boot.

1 Like
12

Oooh … didn’t see this message

Trying to reinstall it for more than 3 hours with stable kernel and same issues all the time

[’/usr/bin/qvm-start’ ‘sys-firewall’] failed:
stdout: “”
stderr: "Start failed: internal error: Unable to reset PCI device 0000:03:00.1:

If I’ll choose not to use sys-net-firewall it will complain about default disp-vm and if I’ll try the advanced install it will just stuck (freeze)

So the only way I can install is actually using the latest kernel option

I’ll try your commands and came back after. Thanks

13

No, it doesn’t work.

So if I’ll change the kernel from grub to 6.6.48 it will freeze at plymouth-quit-wait with an error some lines above that sys-usb failed to start

Changing the kernel on sys-net its better but it will not go above 100Mbs so I guess changing the kernel to stable for dom0 is needed as well but can’t do so :frowning:

14

What’s your wireless controller model for both laptops in the Subsystem string?

15

For Rog Strix

  • dom0 kernel version: 6.11.2
  • sys-net kernel version: 6.6.54

model

00:06.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH CNVi WiFi [8086:06f0]
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wi-Fi 6(802.11ax) AX201 160MHz 2x2 [Harrison Peak] [8086:0074]
	Physical Slot: 6
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 40
	Memory at f2010000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
	Kernel modules: iwlwifi

For Thinkpad (where internet is slow)

  • dom0 kernel version: 6.10.10
  • sys-net kernel version: 6.6.48 (mnanually changed)

model:

00:06.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake PCH CNVi WiFi [8086:7e40] (rev 20)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160MHz [8086:0094]
	Physical Slot: 6
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42
	Memory at f2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
	Kernel modules: iwlwifi
16

Did you try kernel 6.11.2 in sys-net?

17

No it doesn’t work. Actually it will not go above 10Mbs

18

Check CPU and memory usage in sys-net during high load.
Maybe try to increase initial memory and VCPUs assigned to sys-net.
Also check the /var/log/xen/console/guest-sys-net-dm.log log in dom0, maybe there will be some related messages. Maybe some issue with interrupts (MSI).

19

There is no high-load yet, I’m just migrating data from one laptop to another via external HDD (looked into sys-net anyway and looks perfectly fine)

I’m just running fast.com on both laptops to test the speed and on thinkpad is extremely slow.

There is nothing into the log file (this message only: _msi_msix_update: Updatinting MSI-X with pirq <number> qvec ...)

Today when I run it I observed that the laptop may want to increase the speed, it reached 80Mbs and then just started to drop the speed below 40Mbs - with Ubuntu USB and on the thinkpad I’m between 200-300Mbs)

20

Actually there may be something into the log file
I looked into the entire file and not only last lines

This is the file
sys.log (44.1 KB)