WiFi keeps dropping out but stills says I'm connected
Solution 1:
Restarting Network Manager Service
This is pretty self explanatory workaround, I suppose. In terminal do
sudo service network-manager restart;
Alternatively, try sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
Altering module settings
Common solution that works for many cases is altering your module ( aka driver ) settings.
In your instance, you have rtl8723be module for RTL8723BE PCIe card ( which is under lspci in your pastebin output ). Use modinfo rtl8723be what parameters there are for this driver, and you should find ips, fwlps, msi.
Now, you could either alter these parameters using modprobe command as shown here , or you could permanently change settings by creating a rtl8723be.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d folder. For instane, in command line do sudo gedit /etc/modbrobe.d/rtl8723be.conf , enter your password, and add something like this to the file:
options rtl8192se fwlps=0 ips=0 swenc=1
Save, close, reboot.
Side notes: 1) gedit is a graphical text editor. There are plenty of command line editors. I personally prefer nano or vim. 2) I've never personally changed parameters during runtime with modprobe as in the link, so I do not know if it should or not work during runtime. 3) there is a way of viewing the module parameters during run time with systool -v -m modnamehere , which is part of sysfsutils package; you can install that with sudo apt-get install sysfsutils.
Reinserting module
Another common workaround is reinserting the module at runtime. For instance, with rtl8192se wifi card , my connection would drop, indicator would say I'm disconnected, and when I'd select my wifi to reconnect, it would just hang there "configuring" until the connection timed out. Reinserting the module helped 90 % of the time. I've put all commands into a script:
# !/bin/bash
# Description: Simple script to reload r8192e_pci module for wireless card
# refer to https://askubuntu.com/questions/286380/wireless-card-problem-rtl8192se-autodisconnects-after-a-few-minutes-in-13-04
echo deloading wifi module...
sudo rmmod -v r8192e_pci
echo reloading wifi module...
sudo modprobe -v r8192e_pci
You can replace the r8192e_pci with your rtl8723be, save in a file, for instance mod-reload.sh , change permissions with chmod +x mod-reload.sh , and then execute it with ./mod-reload.sh . See if that helps.
Altering kernel parameters
In addition to my dropping connection that I've experienced with rtl8192se, I've also had interesting sound glitch/stutter in every audio-producing program, from firefox to smplayer. What helped alleviate the issue somewhat was changing the kernel boot parameters.
Namely, here's what I've changed in /etc/default/grub file:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash noapictimer clocksource=jiffies"
Again, you can edit that part in grub file with sudo gedit /etc/default/grub command
Side note: depending on your hardware you might use different kernel parameter there. Refer here for more explanation and here for parameters.
Check the connections Often we forget that network cards are actually hardware, and sometimes fiddling with options isn't going to solve a physical problem. If you can easily access the network card "under the hood", check if the two antenna wires that go to it are connected nice and tight, maybe try swapping wires in places.
Upgrade to newer kernel Modules come with kernels, and with each new release they may get improved. Check out this article on upgrading to kernel 3.18.2.
Get different hardware ?
Bad hardware may be just bad, and no amount of fiddling with it will help. Look up ubuntu recommended network cards, and maybe get one of those. Personally, I went back to my good old RTL8187SE, which is actually recommended, and put aside