1658449 - Firefox location service causing Internet connection intermittent.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1810421

(Core :: DOM: Geolocation, enhancement, P3)

Description

[argoyang96]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.105 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Using a USB wifi adapter, open Google map via firefox (or any other website have build-in map that can pinpoint user's location). Click "Your location" at lower right hand side of Google map website.

Actual results:

The internet just cuts off for a few seconds. You can see the indicator light on USB wifi adapter is behaving abnormally. After a few seconds, there is connection again, but after that, there is no transmission at all. This repeat on and on.

Expected results:

Internet should work perfectly. No other browsers have the same issue. I tried Chrome and Edge and Opera, all these are fine. This problem only happens when I'm using location service on Firefox.

Comment 1

[Clara Guerrero ( Need Info Brindusa Tot Please)]

Hi,
I cannot replicate on my end as I don't have a USB Wifi adapter.
I will move this over to a component so developers can take a look over it. If is not the correct component please feel free to change it to an appropriate one.

Thanks for the report.

Best regards, Clara.

Comment 2

[Kershaw Chang [:kershaw]]

Hi Reporter,

Could you try to capture the http log when you see the connection is broken?
When the connection is down, does other browsers work normally?

Thanks.

Comment 3

[argoyang96]

Can't copy and paste the report log file. Every time I tried to copy here, Firefox crashed. Same goes for Chrome.
As far as the bug, it seems only exists with Firefox.

Comment 4

[Valentin Gosu [:valentin] (he/him) {{ AFK in July }}]

The best way to do this is to archive the log file and upload it here.

You can also upload it to google drive and post a link.

Comment 5

[argoyang96]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QJtiNohMRFerzYRRDhQoPx5AT-ijiRRr/view?usp=sharing

Let me know if you find any anomalies in this log file. I did the HTTP logging as Firefox instructed. I'm not exactly sure if I captured the bug. Thanks.

Comment 6

[Valentin Gosu [:valentin] (he/him) {{ AFK in July }}]

So if I understand things correctly, there are 2 issues here:

1. The geolocation is causing the network to go down. I suspect this might be a fault of the specific WiFi adapter you're using.
2. After the network goes down, Firefox looses connectivity, while other browsers don't. Is that correct?

Comment 7

[argoyang96]

Yes, that's correct. For No.2, the network only goes down(or pause) for a couple of seconds, then briefly came back on. After this, the network transmitting often would pause for seconds and then start transmitting. This iteration goes on and on.

Comment 8

[(inactive) Nihanth Subramanya [:nhnt11]]

:argoyang96, I was looking through your http log and noticed that Firefox is making connections to https://127.0.0.1:9614/sync. This seems to be due to the XDM add-on. Do you have that installed? I am wondering if there's any way that might be messing something up and hitting a panic in the driver of your USB wifi card, causing the interface to reset.

Could you check if this issue is reproducible with add-ons disabled[0] and/or with a new profile[1]?

[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-extensions-themes-to-fix-problems#w_start-firefox-in-safe-mode
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles

Comment 9

[argoyang96]

I do have XDM add on installed. But it does not seem to resolve the issue, as I did disable all adds on. And creating a new profile like you suggested. The problem is still there.
I shared both log files below. First one is disabling all extensions. The second one is creating a new FF profile.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GRnxFHDvSzXZzN1HOtZNROBTzP103S2S/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-8-gu59fn_f3-Mc5Sx8z4kGLvm3yqSKv/view?usp=sharing

Comment 10

[Kershaw Chang [:kershaw]]

(In reply to argoyang96 from comment #9)

I do have XDM add on installed. But it does not seem to resolve the issue, as I did disable all adds on. And creating a new profile like you suggested. The problem is still there.
I shared both log files below. First one is disabling all extensions. The second one is creating a new FF profile.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GRnxFHDvSzXZzN1HOtZNROBTzP103S2S/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-8-gu59fn_f3-Mc5Sx8z4kGLvm3yqSKv/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for the log files, but these files are too huge to analysis. It's difficult to tell what's wrong in the log, unless you can point out which http request is wrong.

From log log-main.4524.moz_log, I see the last network change event happened at 2021-02-25 18:18:59.277000.

2021-02-25 18:18:59.277000 UTC - [Parent 4524: Main Thread]: D/nsHttp nsHttpHandler::Observe [topic="network:link-status-changed"]

After this, the network seems to work fine. The log shows nothing wrong in network level.
Based on comment #7, I assume firefox is able to recover after the network went down, right? If so, could you define the problem again?
Could you also confirm that firefox is the only browser breaks your USB wifi card when using location service? What happened if you use other browsers?

Comment 11

[argoyang96]

It is working for a brief moment before it goes down again. Then, the network seems like resetting itself for a couple of seconds, and start transmitting again.
Yes, I can confirm the issue only exist on Firefox browser. Before I start commenting on this review, I tested again using Chrome, it works just fine.
I have a link of a video capturing what it looks like on the flash light of the wifi adapter. It was couple seconds after I click on Goole Map's "Your location" button, this problem starts to appear.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WVsmqV88Mj39ENok5iIJdC4MXsDcQLYB/view?usp=sharing

Comment 12

[Kershaw Chang [:kershaw]]

It seems that you have TRR enabled. Could you turn it off and try again?
I guess this is the reason why Firefox is sending more http requests than other browsers and this could be the reason why firefox is the only browser causes your USB wifi card to stop working.

Comment 13

[argoyang96]

Do you mean turning off the DNS over HTTPS? Or do I have to go to the about:config menu to search for TRR and disable it? Thanks

Comment 14

[argoyang96]

(In reply to argoyang96 from comment #13)

Do you mean turning off the DNS over HTTPS? Or do I have to go to the about:config menu to search for TRR and disable it? Thanks

I did disable the DoH on Firefox, the issue is still there. Another thing I have noticed is after I performing such action, I either have to exit the Firefox browser entirely or disable this wifi adapter device via Windows Control Panel and turn it back on, before things back into normal.

Comment 15

[Dragana Damjanovic [:dragana]]

Henri, you transfer this bug to necko, do you have a hint how could a geo location request make USB Wifi adapter malfunction?

Comment 16

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen) (on vacation)]

(In reply to Dragana Damjanovic [:dragana] from comment #15)

Henri, you transfer this bug to necko, do you have a hint how could a geo location request make USB Wifi adapter malfunction?

I gather that the operation involves reading the nearby wifi networks without intending to disconnect from the currently connected one. Perhaps some wifi adapter disconnects if it is asked to list the available networks?

Comment 17

[Dragana Damjanovic [:dragana]]

It looks like requesting geo-location in fiirefox makes the USB wifi adapter malfunction. This is happening with other browser as well with a difference that it looks like that Firefox is repeating the request every couple of seconds.
It may also be a problem with our fallback code:
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/system/windows/WindowsLocationProvider.cpp#145-163

Moving it to DOM: Geolocaion

Comment 19

[(inactive) Nihanth Subramanya [:nhnt11]]

Reporter of bug 1701507 shared this: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/g1sdh1/firefox_open_causing_ping_spikes/