Hello. As requested, I'll put out my computer information (just know that problems are widespread for all users connected on wireless).
I have an Asus X555lb laptop that is about a year old. I use a USB wireless adapter (TP-WN722N) that uses ath9k - the internal wireless chip is Mediatech of some model I no longer remember that never really worked well to begin with. I run Ubuntu 16.04 with dual boot with Windows (but windows cannot boot due to no fault but my own
). My processor is Intel-i5 Broadwell and although there is an Nvidia chip inside I do not utilize it due to compatibility.
My problems initially started over a year ago. Internet would get slow for all users connected on wireless, including Smartphones, but work fine for those connected by Ethernet. Every 15-25 minutes, wireless will load constantly - on Google Chrome you will see it say 'resolving host' in the bottom left corner before it failed with a host name unresolved error. Firefox says connection timed out. My computer says I'm still connected to the wireless. In fact, I can continue actively playing an MMORPG when this happens so long as I'm not loading any new areas, and utilize the chat.
That modem was a Ubee - the new one we got last weekend is also a Ubee of a newer model. We use the modem as a router. We had the old modem for 5 years with no problems prior to this issue beginning. I can short term resolve the problem by reconnecting the Internet (just clicking the network dropdown from my laptop and disconnected/reconnecting) but this only works for around 15-25 minutes. The first time this occurred I power-cycled the modem for 5 minutes and the wireless worked fine for 6 months before the problem occurred again.
The problem repeated itself between power-cycles with no apparent permanent fix. Three weeks ago it became extremely bad. Power-cycling no longer fixed the problem - I left it unplugged overnight and it started dropping DNS connection within an hour after.
Problem continued on the new modem. Strangely, the connection did work until I connected the wireless printer to LAN. Then problems started again. I connected the printer by wire afterwords and it temporarily went away.
Unfortunately, for no obvious reason I can find, the connection is constantly dropping everyone on the network every 15-20 minutes (from PC), freezes Smartphones every 30 minutes, and is extremely slow. We are getting 3 MB/s instead of the 30 MB/s download we pay for. Tried to contact Time Warner but the representative, after learning we had indeed rebooted the modem (Several times) was at a loss for what could be happening, said he would look into it, and never called back.
Here I am hoping someone may have experienced something like this or might understand what is going wrong. Could it be the large amount of users connected?
On Ethernet (works fine), we have the Printer, the TV (for netflix), and the Satellite Dish.
On Wireless it is two laptops (very occasionally a third is used but there is no change when that one is on versus off), an iPhone, 2 Smartphones frequently, 1 infrequently (my brother occasionally visits), and a very infrequent Nintendo 3DS (the 3DS suffers from losing connection when moved, but cannot determine if that's due to the crappy internet capabilities it has or the modem dropping it).
My phone is a 7 year old Samsung flip phone that does not connect to the Internet.
According to the modem settings, interference is within acceptable range. I have looked everywhere trying to find problems. The only thing I can find that I do not understand comes from the built in modem firewall.
On the local log I see (several hundred in counts) TCP- or UDP-based Port Scans. Most of these hundreds are from the two DNS servers of my ISP ( 209.18.47.62 and 209.18.47.61). 1 or 2 are from google's DNS servers. The others are from ping tests I do using the speedtest.net service. I couldn't find much information about this in particular... could this be causing the slow down? The target for all of these in the logs leads to my internal IP.
http://screenshot.sh/m7VEXWNb0faKR (for visual... next section is target, which is my IP of course, and the source, which is one of the DNS servers mentioned or something from the speed test).
Any advice? I've really had enough of this.