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wrote:

What I don't get with the USB interface hypothesis is why this only happens on a marginal wifi connection. I'm currently connected on my commute into work via my phone acting as a 4G hotspot. The wifi signal is perfect (even if the 4G connection stutters) and I see none of the issues that I experience on home networks, airport networks, hotel lobby networks. It's not a maximum throughput issue in the traditional sense.

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Thanks for the feedback, agreed it's not a consistent hypothesis with what you mention above.

So how does your external wireless-G adapter behave if you use it with your 4G hotspot? Does it also behave completely normally when the range is very small?

Some other people have mentioned big differences in received signal strength between their Yoga and other devices, measured using inSSIDer or similar software. So I wonder if you would also see this if you compared received single strength with your wireless-G adapter when it's attached to your Yoga vs some other device. If it were different, it would be very strange...

There isn't a huge average difference between signal levels with the internal Wifi and the wireless G adapter on average. At rest, the laptop is worse but not dramatically so. However, when you start resting the laptop on the wrong surface, the signal drops significantly, though I'm not entirely convinced that it is any worse than if I sat on the wireless G adapter - it just doesn't help when it interacts with the other ailments the laptop wifi has.

I haven't tried the wireless G with the 4G hotspot but I suspect it would work fine. What I haven't tried is leaving the 4G hotspot almost out of range... THough I suspect I would be back to the stuttering. Worth trying as a cover all the angles thing.

I haven't tried my wireless-G adapter on another laptop with inssider. If I get a chance over the weekend I'll give it a shot.

As calebu2 said in my case also after using the 3G connection of my mobile phone shared through WIFI during several hours I can confirm that I don´t have any problem. So I think the problem is not in the Wifi antenna.

Regards

I'll give my reasoning below, but I now think the wifi problem is roughly the result of the following two issues:

1) A (hopefully) software based buffering issue that prevents the laptop from efficiently handling marginal connections. This may be USB related as it happens with both internal and external wifi adapters.

2) Placement of the wireless antennas in the base (keyboard) of the device that make the laptop more susceptible from interference from objects such as solid tables, legs/torso, hands, etc.

Today, I took the USB wireless-G adapter and attached it to a Samsung laptop with inSSIDer. The signal strength is identical to the yoga, but there is no stuttering issues. But I then played around with the Samsung laptop. I turned it upside down and rested the screen on my lap with the keyboard in the air where the screen would normally be. I then rested my hands on the screen as if I were typing. The drop in signal is similar to what I observe with the internal adapter on the Yoga. And ironically, if you turn the Yoga upside down and rest the screen on your lap with the keyboard in the air, the signal strength is fine!

I can also confirm that I have the stuttering problem if I use my wifi hotspot in a different room and push the connection to the limit (even though the network works fine for other laptops at that distance/signal strength). So in response to saulcf, it could still be an antenna problem, just not one that appears if you are sat on top of your hotspot or router.

In other words, the form factor of the yoga presents interference problems that you just wouldn't experience with a normal laptop. Normally a laptop's antennas are in the screen with plenty of air on either side. People have these issues with tablets and I'm sure that the ideapad tablets have a similar issue. But when the software is working properly, this simply acts like a slower connection unless the connection is really weak.

But, as I mentioned in a previous post - the stuttering effect happens with the Yoga using different wifi adapters, suggesting that the issue is not solely about the internal wifi adapter. Hopefully the fix for the buffering is a relatively simple software fix because it appears that if that was fixed, the laptop would behave no worse than any other tablet subject to the same environmental constraints. Notice I say tablet and not laptop, because the yoga's form factor and antenna location is going to mean that it is more susceptible than the typical laptop.

For future designs, Lenovo could look at doubling up on the antennas and when the device is in laptop mode, enabling antennas in the screen.

I'm not sure I have any other insights - happy to hear other suggestions if people have them. Particularly interested if someone understands how the buffering of wifi is supposed to work or more technical details about the architecture of wifi on the yoga.

Fingers crossed that we see an update soon and that the fixed device behaves acceptably despite the weaker signal strength (something that may be harder to fix).

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wrote:

I'll give my reasoning below, but I now think the wifi problem is roughly the result of the following two issues:

1) A (hopefully) software based buffering issue that prevents the laptop from efficiently handling marginal connections. This may be USB related as it happens with both internal and external wifi adapters.

2) Placement of the wireless antennas in the base (keyboard) of the device that make the laptop more susceptible from interference from objects such as solid tables, legs/torso, hands, etc.

 

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Good work!

To my knowledge there would not be any special/proprietary stacks in the Yoga 13 implementation - the Wi-Fi chipset driver simply interfaces to the chip through the USB stack and the rest is standard Win8.

Normally all the drivers in the USB stack would be standard Microsoft ones. I wonder if there's anything strange in the hardware - possibly taking a look at the implemention in Device Manager could give a clue. You should see one or more USB Root Hubs, some Generic USB Hubs where you can see the devices attached and the power they request (and info about the hub itself), also the Controllers. If there's anything in there which suggests daisychaining of hubs, or non-Microsoft drivers used, it could be a clue towards the issue caused by hardware (just a guess...)

Beyond that, if you're feeling brave, Realtek actually have a driver for RTL8723A which is newer that the latest Lenovo package. It is under RTL8192CU drivers (since RTL8723A is OEM only, it's not shown on their site explicitly) but the drivers inside the RTWLANU_Driver folder explicitly support RTL8723A too. Version is given as 1021.3.0912.2012 (whereas Lenovo's is 1021.2.0904.2012).

I don't have much confidence this would cure the problem since according to your results the issue is not specific to the onboard WiFi card, but you never know...

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=21&PFid=48&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true#2771

Hey folks, I sent my Ideapad down to Lenovo and they seemed to have luck with it, but I didn't when I got it back. I agree with the assessment that it must be software, but I'm also wondering if there's some power management occurring as well. I'm hoping they will post the official results on here.

I'm keeping the unit because with the new router, it's not that bad.

Before I sent the unit down, I did test with the drivers on Realtek's website, but I still had the same result.

Hi,

I bought an IdeaPad Yoga about 6 weeks ago, and while it's very sleek and fun and I enjoy messing around with it a lot, there have been several issues. The operating system wouldn't boot about a week ago; luckily, I use it for work and access 99% of my apps/files through the Internet, so I just rebooted the hard drive entirely and will start backing it up in case this happens again.

But that's not the most persistent issue. I connect to a VPN for certain aspects of my job, and my connection to said VPN is almost always shaky/dropped on the Yoga. Every two minutes or so I'll get a "connection lost" message, and while it instantly reconnects it's always very annoying.

My help desk at work said my connection speed was terrible, and I bought a USB/Ethernet connector but (of course) it doesn't have drivers for Windows 8. The interesting thing is, I'm able to connect to the VPN easily on my old machine: a four-year old Sony Vaio. Same network, same browser (IE), just much better results.

Does the Yoga just have a weak, sad wifi connection? Has anyone else had this issue? If so, is there any fix?

Apologies for the lengthy post; I do like my Yoga and I'm willing to give it a very long leash, but this is extremely annoying and it's very tough to justify an expensive 'work' computer when it can't accomplish simple work tasks.

Moderator comment: Post merged in. Subject edited to match thread.

@Mino65434: I have exactly the same problem accesing to VPN of my company. You will have also the same problem using the USB-Ethernet adaptor and also using an external WIFI antenna.

Calebu2 have done several tests and I have seen that I have the same behaviour in my Yoga. I hope the problem will be only a software issue but I´m not pretty sure. What it´s really strange that this issue was reported time ago and there is no solutions provided by Lenovo at this time. I bought the Yoga also for work but it´s really imposible do it if you have to use Citrix/VPN.

Regards.

saulcf: Sorry to hear you're having the same issues. For a little while, the issues went away for me. No idea why; can't think of a specific update or systems change I initiated. But it must be something to do with the initial software/drivers because I had to reboot my hard drive a few days ago (other issue) and the problem came back afterwards.