Intermittent internet after power outage [Solved]

[Jinseta]

OS: Sparky 8.1
Kernel: 6.12.57+deb13-amd64

Problem: I've had a few brief power outages for various reasons which, of course, knocks out the router. Once the router powers back on, every device reconnects and uses internet without issue except this one. For example, a youtube video might load a few minutes of content, then nothing. There is absolutely no internet available as far as I can tell. After a few minutes, more video time loads in and I can use internet normally. Then repeat. Its hard to narrow down the behavior any more than that.

The GUI reports a connection to the router the entire time. The wlan con strength reads between 76% to 90%. Everything looks to be in order for the ip. My router does not have any physical ports, so I can't test ethernet. I can say before the power outages, internet usage was fine.

Troubleshooting steps taken:
Disconnect/Reconnect has no effect.
Restart/Shutdown has no effect.

install systemd-resolved (and enabled it)
resolvectl flush-caches
dhclient -r wlan0
dhclient wlan0

Edit: I have since run several traceroute and pings during this issue. When the connection goes down, traceroute fails to reach local dns. Pings seem to work, but the statistics report 50% - 75% packet loss. When the connection works, pings float around 30% or less packet loss.

[kanliot]

welp 30% packet loss is quite serious. 

I'm also unfamiliar with dhclient, is that standard on sparkylinux?  I use 'network manager' which is administrated by network work manager applet.

It sounds like DNS is going down for a few minutes for whatever reason.  This is usually the problem when you can successfully ping the internet, but not load any website where the name is not cached.

I recently returned my router a week ago, it was expensive... and old.   I should have done it earlier, spectrum internet here in the USA is quite overpriced.

Please write down your ip address on the working devices, then after reconnecting with your pc, you can check if you are actually connected to the router by opening a new shell and running   

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fping -r0 [your router ip address]
you can also check your current ip address and check that you are on the same network as the other devices.

[Jinseta]

I didn't have to install dhclient. I believe its a common utility. All it does is force the release of the local ip-

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dhclient -r [Interface Name]Then request a new ip from dhcp with-

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dhclient [Interface Name]
I've found it helps with poorly configured dhcp such as those bad routers you mentioned.

As for 'network manager', I'm not familiar with it. There is 'Advanced Network Configuration' that came with the install (Xfce). I'm still learning this GUI, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of options aside from manually setting DHCP and DNS. Its currently all set to automatic (default). I've used 'systemd-resolved' to reset wlan0 and clear caches, but that's it.

Bash reports Command Not Found on fping, but I've tried everything else. I pinged a couple devices on the network and also averaged 30% packet loss. Should I try installing it?

I must confess that I've missed some things. I realized my router has two eth ports after reading the manual. They were hidden by a near-seamless cap. I've since found eth0 works perfectly. The other issue is that this device is 17 years old, though it might have seen 5 years of use. The wlan device could be the issue.

[kanliot]

> dhclient

I can't really research it right now.  but reading this https://superuser.com/questions/1860300/with-network-manager-nmcli-how-do-i-drop-and-renew-a-dhcp-lease-from-the-comm

it indicates that dhclient may be the old way of doing things.

it's a specific problem on linux installs, that there are two ways of doing things, and the old ways exist with the new ways, and sometimes the new ways are just buggy wrappers around the old ways.

You should look for nm-applet running in your system tray.
or you can do... pgrep nm-applet in a terminal
or you can do... sudo systemctl status NetworkManager.service in a terminal.
you should be able to replace dhclient with the ip command or nmcli ... but i am no expert, mainly i just use fping (after installing it) to test what was wrong or not.

being no expert... I don't like the GUI applet for "Network manager" service.. but removing it means i have no software for  autoconnection and stuff.   I don't have the means to replace it, so I never try and do things at a low level and instead let it be.

newer computers should work with old routers.  I've had problems connecting to new wifi routers with old computers...  like "c" version wifi 802.11

Thanks for asking.  Any other problems?

[Jinseta]

No other problems as far as using the internet goes. I appreciate the homework as I am getting serious about my divorce with my old OS. Thanks a bunch for your help.