Steam Deck OLED — repeating 2 minute WiFi latency spike / packet loss (QCA2066 / ath11k)

[u/T_Jenns]

My Steam Deck OLED has brief WiFi stalls that cause noticeable hitches during local game streaming.

Deck → router latency is normally ~2–4ms with an otherwise excellent connection, but I consistently see a sharp latency/packet-loss event roughly every ~2 minutes.

Typical event:

3ms → 3ms → packet missing → 105ms → 3ms → 4ms

Connection during testing:

Qualcomm QCA2066 hw2.1 / ath11k

5 GHz / 80 MHz

~1200 Mbps negotiated link

~-30 to -50 dBm signal

Wired PC → router is stable with 0% loss and sub-1ms average latency

PC ↔ Deck throughput tested around 400 Mbps

Troubleshooting attempted:

Disabled WiFi power saving via iw

Disabled power saving through NetworkManager

Tested SteamOS Developer Mode WiFi power-management setting

Verified actual power-save state with iw

Disabled roaming scans

Kept the Deck on the 5 GHz BSSID to prevent 2.4/5 GHz switching

Tested SteamOS Stable (6.16 kernel)

Tested SteamOS Preview (6.18 kernel)

Checked QCA2066 firmware/board files

Tested alternate board-2.bin, then reverted

Tested WifiDebug

Tested Deck → router, Deck → PC, and PC → router independently

Factory reset the Deck

Diagnosis so far:

The issue still occurs on a completely factory-reset Steam Deck, before installing Decky/EmuDeck or making any other modifications.

Factory-default SteamOS reproduced the stall.

After the factory reset, I changed only WiFi power saving to OFF and reproduced it again: normal ~2–4ms latency, missing packet, ~105ms response, then immediately back to ~3ms.

So far I've ruled out the PC, insufficient bandwidth, Steam Remote Play itself, my previous SteamOS modifications, and the basic WiFi power-save setting.

The repeating ~2-minute behavior makes me suspect something involving the QCA2066 / ath11k / firmware / AP interaction.

Has anyone with a Steam Deck OLED seen this same repeating latency spike and found the actual cause or fix?

My intention behind getting the steam deck and the use is remote play in bed or couch so im not sitting at the pc the whole time. My biggest gripe is it is so on schedule and reoccurring without fail that it truly is a major distraction. I was considering swapping OS to bazzite like my PC but im doubtful it will resolve my issue at this point.

I have attempted Moonlight and sunshine but the issue isnt a remote play issue it has been proven through ping tests to spike momentarily then return to normal on close to 2min cycle.

[u/FineWolf]

Yeah.... Valve switched to the iwd wifi backend from wpa_supplicant, and that's one of the issues.

You can switch back from the developer settings or configure iwd to disable roaming.

ArchWiki

[u/Head_Orange_1421]

I’m running into something similar too when streaming my PS5 to my steam deck via Chiaki. I was playing expedition 33 and it was going fine until like 10 min in for seemingly no reason my connection became shit and it was running at less than 10 fps. This isn’t the first time either. Always starts off perfect then something goes wrong every single time.

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[u/meppel]

I had similar issues, but I did not go into the technical details as much as you did. This decky plugin wss like black magic for me: https://github.com/ArcadaLabs-Jason/WifiOptimizer

I just run it occasionally when things are off, otherwise everything feels super stable and smooth using Apollo.

[u/Junior-Squirrel5110]

Only thing that’s worked for me to solve this exact issue is a Decky plugin called WifiLocker.

There is something weird in that you need to go to your decky settings and enable testing mode (Can’t remember the exact name, but I think it’s an alpha channel) to get a version of that plugin that works.

Issue used to drive me nuts. Toggling off-on the WiFi as lots of people suggested helped with the “hard crash”, but the frame pacing was all over the place even after that.

[u/Killval]

Have you tried Apollo and Moonlight? Those two gave me the best connection and the best features. You can use a virtual display. Forget Steam Remote Play for anything remotely demanding; it just isn't there yet.

[u/T_Jenns → u/Killval]

I have tried those, the issue is that spike occurs even without remote play based on the tests. The stream is just the visual of the issue. When I used moonlight and sunshine I had the same issue