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I have a rpi B+ with a tp-link wn725n usb wifi dongle. I have connected to my home router, but the connections is sketchy at best. The rpi is about 6 feet line of sight from the router at the moment. I can use a browser, but it's boggingly slow. I just ran rp-update and restarted the computer. I'm looking for advice on how to proceed diagnosing the issue. 

$ iwconfig
wlan IEEE 802.11bgn ....
Bit Rate:72.2 Mb/s Sensitivity:0/0
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=2/100 Noise level=0/100
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  • Did it work before you ran rpi-update?
    – Milliways
    Jul 10, 2016 at 3:57
  • Only slowly, it ran better a few months ago.
    – icicleking
    Jul 10, 2016 at 4:00
  • Your question and comments provides very little to go on. You may or may not have a networking problem, but selectively reporting a small part of one command is not helpful. "In normal circumstances there is NEVER a need to run rpi-update as it always gets you to the leading edge firmware and kernel and because that may be a testing version it could leave your RPi unbootable". raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=916911#p916911
    – Milliways
    Jul 10, 2016 at 4:59
  • I have (a version of) a TP-LINK 725. I don't use it with pi's anymore. There are a few problems with these adapters: 1) TP-LINK has a tendency to change the chipset used without changing the model number, leading to confusion for people trying to use them; 2) The chipset is generally something from RealTek, some of which are well supported, some of which aren't supported, and some of which are pseudo-supported, meaning drivers mostly developed for similar chipsets are used but they don't always work properly. My advice is to just ditch using that adapter.
    – goldilocks ♦
    Jul 10, 2016 at 12:53

1 Answer 1

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There are a few usual suspects.

  1. If you are new to Raspberry Pi's, you need to know they are boggingly slow when you start a GUI and a browser. Not a lot of RAM on these things.
  2. While 6 feet is fairly close for a router, there are sometimes "dead spots," even that close. Move the Pi a few feet to either side, see if the signal improves.
  3. Is someone or something else using up a lot of bandwith on your router or modem? Friend of mine had me over some time ago to diagnose a slow internet connection when I saw a light flashing quickly on his router. Turns out his son was torrenting 24/7 in the basement and was eating up all the bandwidth.
  4. Do a speed test to get numbers on this thing. You can do the browser speed test, and you can also do the command-line speed test.
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