BCM4360 High packet loss at 5GHz

[Reagan Sanders]

I have an ASUS PCE-AC68 adapter (BCM4360 chipset), running under 13.10, kernel 3.11.0-13-generic x86_64, bcmwl-kernel-source 6.30.223.141+bdcom-0ubuntu1. The AP supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac.

The card and adapter work perfectly when connected in the 2.4GHz band and 5GHz low channels (36-48). When connecting at 5GHz high channels (149-161), there are no obvious errors, but packet loss to the gateway is extremely high (50-80%). This behavior is very bursty, alternating between no, and total packet loss on a timescale ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes.

Power management is off, and syslog/kern.log don't provide any useful clues. Based on the observed pattern of the packet loss, and the performance of other 5GHz devices connected to the same AP, I don't think it is an interference issue.

I'm unsure as to how to proceed with generating some more useful logging, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Julien Rebetez (julien-rebetez)]

This also affects me on a late 2013 retina macbook pro (11,1) running under 13.10 (same BCM4360 chipset). I've tried both with the original 3.11 and with 3.13 (from mainline kernel ppa).

[James Broadhead (jamesbroadhead)]

I am experiencing this as well; same macbook pro (11,1) as Julien.

I experience many occurrences of this in /var/log/syslog:
 ERROR @wl_cfg80211_get_station : Wrong Mac address

Eventually, the card disassociates, and fails repeatedly to reconnect to the AP. Sometimes it succeeds, but will fail again soon after (the driver remains in a bad state).

I have a very rough "workaround", reloading the wl module, but it's time-consuming and is no real fix.
After running this, the card reassociates on its first try, then works well until the problem re-occurs.
This indicates to me that it's a problem in the driver, not something to do with any state on the card.

sudo service network-manager stop
sudo pkill wpa_supplicant
sudo rmmod wl

sudo modprobe wl
sudo service network-manager restart

[Iván Stepaniuk (istepaniuk)]

I am seeing this same problem on a late 2013 retina macbook pro (11,1) running Debian (jessie/sid) with Linux 3.14.13-2 (same BCM4360 chipset). I am using the Broadcom driver from the Ubuntu repos, bcmwl-kernel-source 6.30.223.141+b

I do not see any different behaviour between 5GHz or 2.4GHz. Tried both on different APs. Maybe the title should be changed.

I also ruled out intereference, the driver reports a steady signal level and link quality values when this happens, plus other stations in the network work perfectly fine, including other identical Macbook Pros running OSX.

As James pointed out, reloading the driver solves the problem, until it occurs again.

As a side note, I also tried the Windows XP Drivers under ndiswrapper (bcmwl5 version 6.30.223.228 obtained from the ASUS PCE-AC68 driver setup) and it behaves in a surprisingly similar fashion. From 0 to 100 packet lost at random.

[Iván Stepaniuk (istepaniuk)]

FYI, I have downloaded and compiled the latest Broadcom 64 bit STA driver (wl), 6.30.223.248 (from http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php) also available on "The Utopic Unicorn" since last monday. The problem persists.

Because I would not have proper support for the rest of my hardware, I have not tried downgrading my kernel to 3.11, wich is the last version mentioned in the README file, but that may be worth trying.

Also, I would be a good idea to test with WEP and with encryption turned off, to try to isolate this issue.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Reagan Sanders, Saucy reached EOL on July 17, 2014.
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