After upgrading to 3.7.8, Wifi Stops Working

[chrisfalaska]

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1747772770 (Mon, May 19 12:51 PM UTC -8:00)
• SteamOS version: 3.7.8
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Opted into SteamOS beta?: No
• Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

After upgrading to 3.7.8 on OLED, wifi stopped connecting in Gaming Mode.

Switching to Desktop mode and trying to connect to wifi states Security Type is "Insecure," however I am using WPA2.

Connecting fails in Desktop mode as well.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Upgrade to 3.7.8 on wifi with OLED
2. System will reboot
3. Network error will appear on boot screen
4. When in Big Picture mode, wifi will attempt to connect but fail
5. Trying to manually connect to network fails
6. Shutting off wifi and restarting has no effect
7. Re-entering wifi password has no effect

Previous working version

• 3.6.24 (OLED)
• OS Build: 20250313.1

Rolling back to 3.6.24 restores wifi.

Router:

NETGEAR Orbi RBR50 AC3000 (1733 + 866 + 400Mbps)† • Simultaneous Tri-band WiFi

• IEEE® 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz – 256QAM support
• IEEE® 802.11a/n/ac 5GHz – 256QAM support

[igormartimiano]

Same issue here. Also the "Steam" and "..." buttons stop working after trying to connect to wifi.

[fledermaus]

Couple of follow up questions:

• Does (STEAM) → 🌙 Developer → Force WPA Supplicant WiFi backend help?
• Does disabling (STEAM) → 🌙 Developer → Enable WiFi Power Management help?
• What kind of wifi network is this? WPA2? WPA3?

[rmatec]

Couple of follow up questions:

* Does `(STEAM)` → ` 🌙 Developer`  → `Force WPA Supplicant WiFi backend` help?

* Does disabling  `(STEAM)` → ` 🌙 Developer`  → `Enable WiFi Power Management` help?

* What kind of wifi network is this? WPA2? WPA3?

Enabling Force WPA Supplicant WiFi backend worked for me.

[fledermaus]

For anyone seeing this - we're interested in whether this affects a particular type of network. In desktop mode:

• tap the wifi icon in the panel
• open the details panel for the broken network by tapping the V on the right
• tap Configure
• tap Wi-Fi Security
• Tell us what's in the Security: box (eg WPA/WPA2 Personal, WPA3 Personal etc)

If you're already using the WPA Supplicant backend mentioned above, tell us that too.

[chrisfalaska]

For anyone seeing this - we're interested in whether this affects a particular type of network. In desktop mode:

• tap the wifi icon in the panel
• open the details panel for the broken network by tapping the V on the right
• tap Configure
• tap Wi-Fi Security
• Tell us what's in the Security: box (eg WPA/WPA2 Personal, WPA3 Personal etc)

If you're already using the WPA Supplicant backend mentioned above, tell us that too.

Note: I am not using the WPA Supplicant backend:

Security: WPA/WPA2 Personal

[fledermaus]

@chrisfalaska does either one of:

• forgetting and then reconnecting to the network
• switching over to WPA Supplicant

fix it for you?

[chrisfalaska]

Couple of follow up questions:

• Does (STEAM) → 🌙 Developer → Force WPA Supplicant WiFi backend help?

Enabling "Force WPA Supplicant WiFi backend" worked for me.

(Enable Wifi Power Management was also enabled)

• Does disabling (STEAM) → 🌙 Developer → Enable WiFi Power Management help?

Disabling this and restarting worked for me.

(Force WPA Supplicant WiFi backend was disabled)

• What kind of wifi network is this? WPA2? WPA3?

WPA/WPA2 Personal

[chrisfalaska]

@chrisfalaska does either one of:

• forgetting and then reconnecting to the network

This did not work.

• switching over to WPA Supplicant

fix it for you?

This worked.

[Sunspark-007]

Not directly related since I am still on 3.6, but maybe.. for ages, the "details" tab says "Unknown Security Type", but my router works at full speed.

Configure and all that as listed in the thread does correctly list WPA/WPA2 in the drop-down menu.

I've not tried Force WPA supplicant, because I've never needed to. I've just always found it odd that the details tab says "Unknown Security Type" right next to the connection speed, IP addresses, etc.

[fledermaus]

Unknown security type or "insecure" in the desktop mode network panel? Yeah. That's been reported before, seems to be a bug in the UI, all the lower layers have the right info afaict.

[Heyyyypete]

For anyone seeing this - we're interested in whether this affects a particular type of network. In desktop mode:

• tap the wifi icon in the panel
• open the details panel for the broken network by tapping the V on the right
• tap Configure
• tap Wi-Fi Security
• Tell us what's in the Security: box (eg WPA/WPA2 Personal, WPA3 Personal etc)

If you're already using the WPA Supplicant backend mentioned above, tell us that too.

My security is WPA/WPA2 Personal and enabling WPA Supplicant Backend fixed my issue as well. Physical controls are also normal.

[kisak-valve]

Steam Deck OLED 1TB Does Not Respond to ARP Requests on WIFI

Issue transferred from https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/1932. @x-0D posted on 2025-05-26T20:56:05:

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1748033199
• SteamOS version: 3.7.8
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Opted into SteamOS beta?: No
• Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

On a Steam Deck OLED 1TB, devices on the same WIFI network (using Keenetic ViVA router for wifi) are unable to ping each other. Upon investigation, it appears that the Steam Deck does not respond to ARP requests from other devices on the network. This prevents successful network communication between the Steam Deck and other machines.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Connect the Steam Deck to the WIFI network.
2. Connect a PC to the same WIFI network.
3. Clear the PC's ARP table and start Wireshark for packet monitoring.
4. Attempt to ping the Steam Deck from the PC.
5. Observe ARP requests in Wireshark.
6. Note that there are no ARP replies from the Steam Deck.
7. The Steam Deck appears to be non-responsive to ARP requests, causing frustration and network issues.

Additional Information

• WIFI hardware: Keenetic ViVA
• Expected behavior: The Steam Deck should respond to ARP requests, enabling successful pinging and network communication.
• Current behavior: The Steam Deck does not respond to ARP requests, resulting in failed pings and broken network connectivity.
• Workaround: Enabled wpa supplicant at developer settings. This fixed the problem.

[Oihso]

Steam Deck OLED 1TB Does Not Respond to ARP Requests on WIFI

Issue transferred from #1932. @x-0D posted on 2025-05-26T20:56:05:

Have the same problem. Tested with the Force WPA Supplicant WiFi backend option and it helped too. Seems like the sleep mode somehow disables the ARP broadcast listening/answering. It worked fine before the 3.7.8 update. I checked arptables - everything looked ok (default accept, no specific rules).

Also after resuming from sleep SD sends 5 ARP broadcasts simultaneously, but I don't know how it was before

[victorvsp]

I believe I have a similar problem as chrisfalaska, and decided to chime in with my case if it helps figure out this problem. In my case the Steam Deck connects to my home WiFi network but cannot reach internet (e.g., complains about network connectivity if I try to check for system updates, multiplayer in games doesn't work reliably, discord keeps trying to check for updates, or can't join any voice chat room on discord by getting stuck on "connecting").

Forgetting the network and connecting to it again seems to solve the issue until I put the deck to sleep and wake it up again. Reverting to the previous SteamOS version (3.7.8 -> 2.6.24) also solves the issue.

Reproducing the issue: Connecting to the WiFi network, sleeping, and then waking up from sleep is a consistent and repeatable way to reproduce these problems for me.

Here is information that fledermaus asked for:

• Toggling `Force WPA Supplicant WiFi backend seems to solve the issue
• WiFi security: WPA/WPA2 Personal

Test with another WiFi network: Surprisingly for me, sharing my home WiFi connection to my steam deck via my phone (with data turned off) the issues disappeared. Or, at least, I could not reproduce anymore the issue via sleeping as I can when directly connected to my home WiFi.

[fledermaus]

@victorvsp Thanks - It does appear to only affect certain networks - I don't have an affected setup here (which makes debugging fun).

When you say sharing your connection: Do you mean the phone was acting as a hotspot and your deck was connecting to the phone over WiFi? So your home WiFi was up but the phone was also acting as an AP and providing a WiFi network?

If so, and you wouldn't mind, could you run:

 `sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | tee iwlist.log`

Attach iwlist.log, and let me know which of the listed networks is your home WiFi and which is your phone?

[victorvsp]

@fledermaus I hope to help with the fun then.

On sharing my connection: yes, I set my phone (Pixel 6 with Android 15) as a hotspot. I thought I could only share data, but when trying to resolve this issue on my deck I found out I could share my WiFi connection this way if I was connected to it, working as an AP (I deactivated my phone data to be sure, and surely it still worked).

Here is the iwlist.log file you asked. My home network is "DRACARYS" and my phone network is "Pixel 6 Network".

Later today I will also try to get journal logs of NetworkManager in debug mode while reproducing the issue.

[fledermaus]

Thanks, hopefully we can figure out what the trigger is.

[victorvsp]

Ok, I've performed some tests and I'm sending the logs your way. More specifically, I've configured NetworkManager to TRACE level of log following these instructions. Then I roughly kept track of what I did (all in desktop mode):

22:49: NM restart 22:50: Open Discord - Seemed OK 22:51: Sleep and awake 22:51: Discord, still seems OK (First time I could not trigger the problem?) 22:52: Sleep and awake again 22:52-22:53: Discord failed to open (Problem!) 22:54: Connect to phone network, Discord opens normally 22:55: Close discord, forget DRACARYS network, sleep and awake 22:56: Opens discord again (connected to phone network), all fine

I'm then attaching the results of the command journalctl --since "2025-06-07 22:49" -u NetworkManager in nm-log.log. I saw some DNS weirdness (which might be normal, I really can't tell), so I'm also attaching the results of journalctl -u systemd-resolved -e --since "2025-06-07 22:49" in systemd-resolved.log.

[late-lattee]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/1904#issuecomment-2953438877

@victorvsp , do you also have an Orbi RBR50 access point? If not, would you mind sharing make/model of your AP?

[victorvsp]

My AP is provided by a Brazilian IP (Vivo). Here are the details I found on the device:

• Maker: MitraStar
• Model: GPT-2742GX4X5 v6

[fledermaus]

There's a firmware change in SteamOS 3.7.10 which may fix this.

[SiTWulf]

There's a firmware change in SteamOS 3.7.10 which may fix this.

The problem persist in a Steam Deck LCD version, get micro stutters in Wifi 5G in a router eero 6 Your system information

• Steam client version: 1750380802
• SteamOS version: 3.7.10
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Opted into SteamOS beta?: Yes
• Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: Yes

[fledermaus]

The problem persist in a Steam Deck LCD version, get micro stutters in Wifi 5G in a router eero 6 Your system information

Different problem, I'm afraid - this one specifically prevents the OLED model from connecting to some wifi networks.

Have you got "wifi power management"

(STEAM) → 🌙 Developer → Enable WiFi Power Management

turned on or off?

[SiTWulf]

The problem persist in a Steam Deck LCD version, get micro stutters in Wifi 5G in a router eero 6 Your system information

Different problem, I'm afraid - this one specifically prevents the OLED model from connecting to some wifi networks.

Have you got "wifi power management"

(STEAM) → 🌙 Developer → Enable WiFi Power Management

turned on or off?

Yes, with the same results

[fledermaus]

The problem persist in a Steam Deck LCD version, get micro stutters in Wifi 5G in a router eero 6 Your system information

Ok. As this is different (and unrelated) problem, could you open a new issue?

Of further interest will be:

• the full make and model of your wifi access point
• the name (ESSID) of your wifi network
• the output of sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

We'll probably also need some wifi debug info, I'll add the details of how to get that in the new issue.

[SiTWulf]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/1904#issuecomment-3009451095

Yes, i open a new issue every version, nobody help me. You can get more info in here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/1996 https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/595134792309162738/

[fledermaus]

You can get more info in here: #1996

I'll check with a colleague to see what kind of debug info we might need and add further instructions there.

[antonsmetanin]

I had the same issue. WiFi was working fine until two days ago when it suddenly stopped. But updating from 3.7.8 to 3.7.12 beta seems to have helped, so I guess it really was that regression.

[janweinen]

Hi everyone, I just tested 3.7.13 stable and still got the wifi issue - to a point where I could not establish a connection even with the above mentioned workarounds. After several reboots it is now working but not reliable. Need to test further. Specs are T-online speedport, WPA2 secure. Let me know if you Need something else.

[fledermaus]

Need to test further. Specs are T-online speedport, WPA2 secure. Let me know if you Need something else.

If you could attach boot.«DATE».log after running journalctl -b 0 > boot.$(date +'%Y-%d-%m-%H%M%z').log and let us know roughly what time the wifi failure occurred that would be a useful place to start.

If you boot back into the old OS version by holding the (…) button while rebooting and run the same command and attach the file it produces, that would be handy too.