BCM4352 unstable connection

[Archazey]

Hi guys,

To start, I want to say that I am newbie to linux so please be patient. The problem I encountered for some months (and finally I want and have time to solve it) is that at home the router is pretty far (20m and some walls between us) from my desk and the signal and connection on debian is vey low and unstable. It would be a big pain to move it, and if my driver is the problem, I should solve it. From what I've seen the connection drops constantly from speeds of 500-1000 Kib/s to 0Kib/s (it does not disconnect, just the speed drops). Let's say that usually it stays at 0 Kib/s around 20-40 seconds. The rate at which it drops connection makes it unusable....

On windows I got no problem, I think I can get around 2MB/s stable download speed, it's actually pretty good for my normal usage.

Firstly I thought that if I manage to keep the card working (downloading / uploading all the time) it won't go in "sleep" mode. And I kept pinging some IP but it didn't show some better results. This issue was also encountered on ubuntu 16.04 (I got debian on february).

Some info about my system:

uname -a

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Linux mircea 4.9.0-2-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.13-1 (2017-02-27) x86_64 GNU/Linux

lspci -nn | grep 14e4

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08:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Limited BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43b1] (rev 03)

lspci -v (only wireless card info)

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08:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Limited BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Lenovo BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at d1600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
	Memory at d1400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
	Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [58] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Capabilities: [68] Vendor Specific Information: Len=44 <?>
	Capabilities: [ac] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
	Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
	Capabilities: [13c] Device Serial Number 2c-33-00-ff-ff-00-00-01
	Capabilities: [150] Power Budgeting <?>
	Capabilities: [160] Virtual Channel
	Kernel driver in use: wl
	Kernel modules: bcma, wl

iwconfig

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enx0c5b8f279a64  no wireless extensions.

enp9s0    no wireless extensions.

wlp8s0    IEEE 802.11  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=off   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          
lo        no wireless extensions.

From what I searched for this model of wifi card wl driver is the only option to go, the others don't support it (I could be wrong). I don't even know what is the version of the driver and where to search for other versions. The best solution I can think of is to somehow change the driver version.
Also I don't know where I read it but it was specific to my laptop (lenovo y50-70). It was a solution to swap the connectors on the card. I never tried that because it seemed stupid (how can swapping make that even work?), but if it seems a reasonable to you, I will try it.

Any help would be awesome

Thanks!

[pylkko]

Have you tried downgrading the kernel?