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Launchpad report: for all those with the same problem, please subscribe to this report I opened in Launchpad so that it can gain some traction.

I've been using Ubuntu 16.04 with kernel 4.7 for some time and wifi must mostly fine, except for a few random times that the connection was lost (solved by restarting network-manager). But after upgrading to kernel 4.8, wifi simply does not work when the router is using certain channels (the connection is lost in ~1 minute cycles).

On the channels it does work, I get a choppy connection that briefly stops working (packets are lost but the connection is kept up) in regular cycles.

dmesg shows a bunch of intermittent brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code errors:

$ dmesg | grep brcmf
[    5.109218] usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
[    5.109280] brcmfmac 0000:3a:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    5.219983] brcmfmac 0000:3a:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4350-pcie.txt failed with error -2
[    5.651605] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware version = wl0: Oct 22 2015 06:16:26 version 7.35.180.119 (r594535) FWID 01-e791c176
[    5.672505] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code (0x30 0x30)
[    5.691020] brcmfmac 0000:3a:00.0 wlp58s0: renamed from wlan0
[    6.755994] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_escan_handler: scan not ready, bsscfgidx=0
[    6.755997] brcmfmac: brcmf_fweh_event_worker: event handler failed (69)
[   78.628101] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code (0x30 0x30)
[  144.057646] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code (0x30 0x30)
[  211.640770] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code (0x30 0x30)
...
[ 2644.643388] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code (0x30 0x30)

The wifi adapter is detected fine:

$ lspci -k | grep Net
3a:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4350 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 08)
    Subsystem: Dell BCM4350 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter

I tried rolling back to an older version of network-manager but nothing changed. Currently using:

+++-=========================================-=========================-=========================-========================================================================================
hi  network-manager                           1.1.93-0ubuntu4           amd64                     network management framework (daemon and userspace tools)

Normally I would just roll back to 4.7 and wait for a fix, but kernel 4.8 fixes other issues for Skylake-based hardware which are relevant to me.

EDIT I've tried Ubuntu 16.10's daily build (ships with kernel 4.8) and the exact same problem is present.

Leo Brito
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    Do you still have to recompile Broadcom driver from source with each new kernel? Did you do that? I use centos on two Dell laptops. One had a Broadcom based wifi card. Replaced with Intel card and no more problems. If your goal is learning the intricacies of making Broadcom work, go for it. If your goal is using wifi with good performance without having to spend your time troubleshooting and configuring it, consider switching to an Intel based wifi (used ones are cheap). Of course, kernel 4.x with Ubuntu may support Broadcom natively, in which case, ignore me. – Jeter-work Oct 04 '16 at 15:39
  • @Xalorous I don't have to recompile the driver. Since at least kernel 4.4, which ships with Ubuntu 16.04, this specific Broadcom adapter is supposed to work (and it does, despite some small bugs). In my experience only kernel 4.8 has serious issues with the driver. – Leo Brito Oct 04 '16 at 16:43
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    Ahh, I work with LTS distributions for servers (RHEL, CentOS). I believe we're still on 3.6. Oh, wow, it's 2.6. TIL about kernel backporting. – Jeter-work Oct 05 '16 at 12:10
  • Did you find any solution for this? I'm considering upgrading to kernel 4.8 from 4.4 and not sure if I should due to this wifi issue – user38480 Dec 15 '16 at 11:03
  • @user38480 this issue practically stopped in my setup. I am unsure what solved the issue, must have been some package update. Now I only get one or two of those (not a ISO3166 code) errors close to startup, and connection is fine during the entire session. – Leo Brito Dec 15 '16 at 17:18
  • @brito any indication as to what solved this for you? – christopherlovell Jan 24 '17 at 18:46

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