Ubuntu – How to restart WiFi interface without rebooting (it drops connection)

networkingwireless

I boot into ubuntu and it connects to the Wifi network fine. After about 10-15min the DNS stop resolving any website and a couple of minutes later network-managers tells me that I'm disconnected and tries to reconnect constantly to my router and fails to do it. Upon Ubuntu restart everything works fine for the first 10-15min again. When I boot into Mac OS X everything is fine with the same connection!

How do I restart wifi interface? sudo ifdow wlan0 just tells me that wlan0 is not configured and wlan0 doesn't appear in /etc/network/interfaces either, which I find strange…. (unless network-manager is doing it behind my back).

Best Answer

I had the same problem with ubuntu 15.10 after running on a wired network and having my laptop suspended and resuming when not on a wired network anymore.

I found this blogpost very helpful: http://blog.ostermiller.org/resetting-wireless-networking-on-ubuntu-without-rebooting/

You need to find your driver:

sudo lshw -C network

Look for the wireless controller and in configuration look for driver. In my case:

*-network
   description: Network controller
   product: Wireless 8260
   configuration: driver=iwlwifi latency=0

All I had to do to fix is run

sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi && sudo modprobe iwlwifi
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