Comment 11 for bug 147439

Hello,

Similar to Matthias, I have worked around this by removing Network Manager and installing Wicd instead. The benefit that Wicd gives is that you can specify which AP to latch on to. This has completely eliminated this issue for me. Here's why:

Through a combo of system logs and Wireshark, what I determined is that intermittently when it roams, it is unable to reconfirm its DHCP lease for some reason. This causes the IP to be unbound from the interface, thus dropping all connections. Sometimes it would renew the lease on its own, but sometimes I had to stop and restart Wireless via Network Manager in order to get it to do so.

So, by using Wicd to specify one - and only one - AP for it to use when I am in various places in the building, it prevents the issue above from happening.

On the downside, I did get kernel-panics when making changes in Wicd while connected to an 802.11g AP at home (which I am no longer using). Can't say what caused, that, though. Just trying to be even-handed here.

Specific to this bug, in my research on the Intertoobz it seems that either the 3945 hardware itself or the drivers themselves is far too aggressive when it comes to roaming. This is why the issue only occurs for folks in an Enterprise environment (e.g.: multiple APs all with the same SSID). Home users who have only one AP would not see this issue.

Another important note: I had this issue on the same laptop back when it was running Windows XP. Changing the roaming aggressiveness and power in the Windows driver config had no perceivable affect on the symptom. Other Windows users with the same chipset also had the same issue.

So, unless there is an issue in the driver (as opposed to the hardware), I am not sure what progress can be made on this.

As always, YMMV and what I wrote above should be taken with a metric ton of salt.

Cheers,
CJC