Problem of frequent disconnects with atheros wireless card

[sem]

I use an NETGEAR WG311T, which has an Atheros AR52 chipset, to connect to a WPA home network. It worked out of the box, and seemed stable for quite some time, however recently it can not hold a steady connection in ubuntu. In windows xp I experience no problems with it.

The disconnects follow a pattern. Network Manager automatically connects and the connection is solid for around ten minutes, then it disconnects, and reconnects every few minutes for around an hour or so until finally remaining disconnected.

I am trying connecting manually with wpa_supplicant and dhcp. The pattern is largely the same, however now if it disconnects, I can end wpa_supplicant with ctrl-c. When I attempt a reconnect, it always works (but it disconnects after a few minutes)

Looking in on the output of wpa_supplicant, one thing it says is the 4 way handshake failed (pre-shared key may be incorrect). It also complains about invalid hardware addresses and mentions the driver sometimes. I'll post the output soon.

[sem (semitones)]

This is part of a 40MB file

[sem (semitones)]

This is an excerpt of about two disconnect/reconnect cycles without the -dd tag. (sudo wpa_supplicant -i ath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -D madwifi -w)

Significant lines:
ioctl[IEEE80211_IOCTL_SETMLME]: Invalid argument
Association request to the driver failed

WPA: EAPOL-Key Replay Counter did not increase - dropping packet

Authentication with 00:00:00:00:00:00 timed out.

Why would it try to connect to a non-existing ap? (00:00:00:00:00:00)

[Termina (termina)]

I'm having the same problem with the latest version of Gusty. I did a dist-upgrade from 7.04 to 7.10. (Not a fresh install!)

Linksys WRT54G AP, using WPA. (wpa_supplicant).

I'm using the same Atheros card.

Attached is my syslog.

Hopefully this gets fixed before Gusty is released. ;)

[Termina (termina)]

Also, I notice that I have trouble doing multiple tasks at once. If nothing is going on, and I ping yahoo.com I see my usual 30ms. If I load something (google.com, for instance) it takes a good 30 seconds to load google.com... ping shows a leap up to 90ms!

Also, loading multiple web pages is impossible; I have to load one at a time or nothing really happens.

If it helps, iwconfig -v shows a possible problem (wireless-tools not compadible with v22?)...

iwconfig Wireless-Tools version 29
          Compatible with Wireless Extension v11 to v21.

Kernel Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v22.

ath0 Recommend Wireless Extension v18 or later,
          Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v22.

[Termina (termina)]

Sorry for all the posts, one more thing to comment:

I've tried removing the atheros drivers included with ubuntu, and instead compiled the madwifi drivers from source.

This did not resolve the issue, which seems to confirm that it's a wireless-tools bug / version conflict.

[sem (semitones)]

My problem disappeared when I upgraded to gutsy. Now my connection is solid.
So it definitely was a software problem.

On 9/25/07, Termina <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Sorry for all the posts, one more thing to comment:
>
> I've tried removing the atheros drivers included with ubuntu, and
> instead compiled the madwifi drivers from source.
>
> This did not resolve the issue, which seems to confirm that it's a
> wireless-tools bug / version conflict.
>
> --
> Problem of frequent disconnects with atheros wireless card
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/133591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[sem (semitones)]

This is a pretty old bug -- is it still a problem for anyone?

[Krzysztof Janowicz (janowicz)]

since some days i have a similar problem running 8.04 native on my macbook pro (santa rosa). i am using the wireless workaround from the wiki: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro#Wireless and it was working stable for some month but now the connection is going down many times per hour. a reconnect is not possible. i have to deactivate the wlan interface (e.g., using nm-applet 0.6.6) and activate it again. then i have a connection for some minutes and so on. this does not happen if i boot mac os. i am using wpa and madwifi .

[Krzysztof Janowicz (janowicz)]

by the way the connection to the router is still there but i have no connection to the internet (and no IP).

from the user.log:

Jul 31 22:10:39 simbox dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not found under /com/redhat/dhcp/ath0 for sub-path ath0.dbus.get.host_name

Jul 31 22:10:39 simbox dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not found under /com/redhat/dhcp/ath0 for sub-path ath0.dbus.get.domain_name

Jul 31 22:10:39 simbox dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not found under /com/redhat/dhcp/ath0 for sub-path ath0.dbus.get.nis_domain

Jul 31 22:10:39 simbox dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not found under /com/redhat/dhcp/ath0 for sub-path ath0.dbus.get.nis_servers

Jul 31 22:10:39 simbox dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not found under /com/redhat/dhcp/ath0 for sub-path ath0.dbus.get.interface_mtu

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

Krzysztof,

Thanks, but please open a new bug as this one seems to be no longer valid.

Thanks!