Random extreme network issues (edited)

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(original) Hi, I desperately need help with something. ever since i switched to fedora with KDE I get random extreme WiFi problems such as packet loss and huge ping spikes that basically render games unplayable. Any ideas on why this is happening to me? If any more information is needed, please ask. I am new to linux as a whole, let alone fedora itself.

(edits ahead)

basic info:

I am unable to find my specific WiFi access point, however my provider is Sky, and my router model is the Sky SR203.

I am dual booting Fedora with Windows 11, and they are on completely seperate drives. As far as I have seen, I am having no issues occurring on Windows 11. I also did not have these issues until I made the switch to Fedora.

System: 
  Kernel: 7.1.4-200.fc44.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 16.1.1 
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.7.3 tk: Qt v: N/A wm: kwin_wayland dm: N/A 
    Distro: Fedora Linux 44 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) 
Machine: 
  Type: Desktop Mobo: NZXT model: N5 Z690 serial: <superuser required> 
    Firmware: UEFI vendor: American Megatrends LLC. v: 19.03 date: 05/07/2025 
CPU: 
  Info: 14-core (6-mt/8-st) model: 13th Gen Intel Core i5-13600KF bits: 64 
    type: MST AMCP arch: Raptor Lake rev: 1 cache: L1: 1.2 MiB L2: 20 MiB 
    L3: 24 MiB 
  Speed (MHz): avg: 800 min/max: 800/5100:3900 cores: 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 
    4: 800 5: 800 6: 800 7: 800 8: 800 9: 800 10: 800 11: 800 12: 800 13: 800 
    14: 800 15: 800 16: 800 17: 800 18: 800 19: 800 20: 800 bogomips: 139776 
  Flags-basic: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
Graphics: 
  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices \[AMD/ATI\] Navi 33 \[Radeon RX 7600/7600 
    XT/7600M XT/7600S/7700S / PRO W7600\] vendor: Gigabyte driver: amdgpu 
    v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 8 ports: active: DP-1,HDMI-A-1 
    empty: DP-2,HDMI-A-2,Writeback-1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:7480 
  Device-2: ChiZhu Tech USBDISPLAY driver: N/A type: USB rev: 2.0 
    speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-9:9 chip-ID: 87ad:70db 
  Display: wayland server: Xwayland v: 24.1.13 compositor: kwin_wayland 
    driver: gpu: amdgpu d-rect: 4480x2520 display-ID: 0 
  Monitor-1: DP-1 pos: bottom-r model: MSI MAG 273Q X24 res: 2560x1440 
    hz: 240 dpi: 112 diag: 672mm (26.5") 
  Monitor-2: HDMI-A-1 pos: primary,top-left model: AOC 24G4 res: 1920x1080 
    hz: 180 dpi: 93 diag: 604mm (23.8") 
  API: EGL v: 1.5 platforms: device: 0 drv: radeonsi device: 1 drv: swrast 
    gbm: drv: radeonsi surfaceless: drv: radeonsi wayland: drv: radeonsi x11: 
    drv: radeonsi 
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: amd mesa v: 26.1.4 glx-v: 1.4 
    direct-render: yes renderer: AMD Radeon RX 7600 (radeonsi navi33 ACO DRM 
    3.64 7.1.4-200.fc44.x86_64) device-ID: 1002:7480 display-ID: :0.0 
  API: Vulkan v: 1.4.341 surfaces: N/A device: 0 type: discrete-gpu 
    driver: mesa radv device-ID: 1002:7480 device: 1 type: cpu 
    driver: mesa llvmpipe device-ID: 10005:0000 
  Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo 
    de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor wl: wayland-info x11: xdriinfo, 
    xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr 
Audio: 
  Device-1: Intel 600 Series Family HD Audio vendor: ASRock 
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:7ad0 
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices \[AMD/ATI\] Navi 31 HDMI/DP Audio 
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 8 
    bus-ID: 03:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:ab30 
  Device-3: MV-SILICON fifine Microphone 
    driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid type: USB rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s 
    lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-4.1:6 chip-ID: 3142:0068 
  Device-4: TTGK CX31993 384Khz HIFI AUDIO 
    driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s 
    lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-4.2:8 chip-ID: 3302:3365 
  API: ALSA v: k7.1.4-200.fc44.x86_64 status: kernel-api 
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.6.8 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse 
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin 
    4: pw-jack type: plugin 
Network: 
  Device-1: Intel 600 Series Family CNVi Wi-Fi driver: iwlwifi v: kernel 
    bus-ID: 00:14.3 chip-ID: 8086:7af0 
  IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: ASRock driver: r8169 v: kernel 
    pcie: speed: 5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: 3000 bus-ID: 07:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8125 
  IF: enp7s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Bluetooth: 
  Device-1: Intel AX211 Bluetooth driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 2.0 
    speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-14:7 chip-ID: 8087:0033 
  Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 5.4 
    lmp-v: 13 
Drives: 
  Local Storage: total: 2.26 TiB used: 175.76 GiB (7.6%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: A-Data model: LEGEND 800 size: 931.51 GiB 
    speed: 63.2 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 47.9 C 
  ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 vendor: Crucial model: CT1000P3SSD8 size: 931.51 GiB 
    speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 45.9 C 
  ID-3: /dev/sda vendor: Crucial model: CT480BX500SSD1 size: 447.13 GiB 
    speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> temp: 40 C 
Partition: 
  ID-1: / size: 928.91 GiB used: 175.12 GiB (18.9%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/dm-0 
    mapped: luks-66fdc7bb-3f15-4129-bf2d-c5b1be8244df 
  ID-2: /boot size: 1.9 GiB used: 635.7 MiB (32.7%) fs: ext4 
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p2 
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 598.8 MiB used: 20 MiB (3.3%) fs: vfat 
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p1 
  ID-4: /home size: 928.91 GiB used: 175.12 GiB (18.9%) fs: btrfs 
    dev: /dev/dm-0 mapped: luks-66fdc7bb-3f15-4129-bf2d-c5b1be8244df 
Swap: 
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 1.58 GiB (19.8%) priority: 100 
    dev: /dev/zram0 
Sensors: 
  System Temperatures: cpu: 41.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 68.0 C 
    mem: 77.0 C 
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 1370 
Info: 
  Memory: total: 16 GiB available: 15.44 GiB used: 4.94 GiB (32.0%) 
  Processes: 570 Power: uptime: 1h 24m wakeups: 0 Init: systemd v: 259 
    default: graphical 
  Packages: pm: rpm pkgs: N/A note: see --rpm pm: flatpak pkgs: 21 
    Compilers: N/A Shell: Bash v: 5.3.9 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.41
2

When asking for help with a problem you should strive to provide enough detail to allow others with access to similar hardware and software versions to reproduce the problem. The easiest way for others to match software versions is when your system, network, and vendor software (including firmware) are fully updated. This also helps avoid time wasted on a solved problem.

  1. are you booting any other OS’s?
  2. for a personal/home network, what make and model WiFi access point do you have?
  3. for school, work, or other shared WiFi, can you contact the administrator?
  4. a good way to share your hardware and basic software details is to install inxi (it will pull in a bunch of small helper packages) and run inxi -ezxx in a terminal. These options produce sanitized output suitable for sharing on public forums. Post as web-discoverable pre-formatted text using the <\> button.

With luck, your post will be seen by someone who knows a solution. With less luck the issue may not have a good solution and you will need to consider upgrading the WiFi chip.

3

I appreciate this, thankyou. I will make edits as best as I can. It’s probably obvious that it is my first post here.

4

When making additional information available please post in sequence time-wise.
Your editing of the initial post makes it impossible to know what was original and what was changed as a result of the comments made by George.

The editing you seem to have done almost makes the comments by George seem misguided.

I am not certain what you may have done with the inxi output, but the large numbers of the asterisks ** in that text make it difficult to read. Is perhaps your screen not set to markdown in the text entry window when posting. Note the button on the far left of this image, where mine is set to markdown.
image

Generally the output of inxi looks similar to this when posted. (note that it does not contain the multiple ** characters, but instead appears almost exactly as seen on-screen.)

$ inxi -ezxx
System:
  Kernel: 7.1.5-200.fc44.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 16.1.1
  Desktop: GNOME v: 50.3 tk: GTK v: 3.24.52 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM
    Distro: Fedora Linux 44 (Workstation Edition)
5

Thankyou very much, this is starting to make even more sense now, I’ll add some fixes. However when I ran the same command in my terminal, what I posted here was the output it gave me, definitely not what you have shown.

6

Is it possible you switch to use Ethernet when you are playing the games to ensure this is indeed a problem with the wifi module and not with the system performance in general?

Can you describe the sequence of events leading to the network degrading as a repeatable pattern?

Does it recover itself? Randomly or consistently when you quit playing the game?

Does it happen only when playing games?

BTW, welcome to Fedora Linux :slight_smile: