Ubuntu driver for WiFi for Asus 550L

My Asus 550L, which initially came with Windows 7 and now has Ubuntu 20.04, connects to Internet via Wi-Fi. The connection works for a short time and is unstable.

Do you have any suggestion or can you tell me how to change drivers (Ralink corp. RT3290 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe [1814:3290])?

Your legacy Medaiatek RT3290 device is a WiFi+Bluetooth adapter, so there is a possible interference between the two.

There seem to be a few alternatives.

1. There are sometimes configuration options that help, like changing the WiFi channel or device antenna. You can check if there is something like that.

2. From this similar post you can try

    sudo sed -i 's/wifi.powersave = 3/wifi.powersave = 2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf
    systemctl restart network-manager.service
   

   which changes the configuration for powersave in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf. It is also reported that changing the value to 0 instead of 2 might work. You may perhaps need also

    sudo iwconfig wlo1 power off
   

   (use the name of your adapter instead of wlo1, you can check with iw dev).

3. This old thread also advocates disabling power management with

    sudo iwconfig wlo1 power off
    sudo iwconfig wlo1 txpower fixed
   

4. This old Q&A describes a method

    sudo apt install firmware-misc-nonfree
   

   that works for Debian 9, which is backed by a recent report that it works in Ubuntu 20.04. But this mentions that the problem is with kernels >=4, and they were not solved yet. At east, it is not difficult to try it.

5. This old answer shows how to compile from source, and it seems it worked for many people, but it deals with old kernels, so it is not clear it would work for you. This one is harder to try than the one above.

Your wireless may be dropping because of power management; that is, the feature where the card partially powers down to save battery power during periods of inactivity and then, ideally, powers back up seamlessly when activity resumes. Let's disable power saving to see if it helps. From the terminal:

sudo sed -i 's/3/2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/*

Your wireless may be dropping because the channel to which it was connected has suddenly changed.

Please check the settings in the router. WPA2-AES is preferred; not any WPA and WPA2 mixed mode and certainly not TKIP. Second, if your router is capable of N speeds, you may have better connectivity with a channel width of 20 MHz in the 2.4 GHz band instead of automatic 20/40 MHz, although it is likely to affect N speeds. I recommend a fixed channel, either 1, 6 or 11, rather than automatic channel selection. Also, be certain the router is not set to use N speeds only; auto B, G and N is preferred.

Your wireless may be dropping because there are two wireless access points with the same name and password. This is typical when you have a 2.4 gHz segment and a 5 gHz segment of the same router. Your wireless may be roaming, looking for a better connection. If this is the case, I suggest that you rename the access points; something like myrouter2.4 and myrouter5.

After making these changes, reboot the router.

Next, I recommend that your regulatory domain be set explicitly. Check yours:

sudo iw reg get

If you get 00, that is a one-size-maybe-fits-all setting. Find yours here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 Then set it temporarily:

sudo iw reg set IS

Of course, substitute your country code if not Iceland. Set it permanently:

sudo nano /etc/default/crda

Change the last line to read:

REGDOMAIN=IS

Proofread carefully, save and close the text editor.

Is there any improvement?