iwl4965 connection drops every 10-15 minutes

[Jurjen Oskam]

I have a Thinkpad T61p with an Intel 4965 AGN card (I'm on Gutsy). Everything worked until a week or two
ago or so, but since then I experience dropping wireless connections. Problem is, I also changed access
points around that time. However, other operating systems on the same laptop (OpenBSD -current,
Windows XP, Windows Vista) do not experience dropouts, not even on the new access point. The connection
drops even when it's actively in use, so it doesn't seem te be caused by an inactivity timeout.

The access point is a PCI card with a Ralink 2561 chipset in hostap mode, in a server running
OpenBSD 4.1-STABLE. The connection is 802.11g, without WEP or WPA. (I use IPsec to secure the
traffic going over the wireless connection.)

When the connection drops, the following shows up in the dmesg:

[ 2793.384000] wlan0: No ProbeResp from current AP 00:11:6b:3d:7f:6a - assume out of range
[ 2825.384000] wlan0: No STA entry for own AP 00:11:6b:3d:7f:6a
[ 2857.384000] wlan0: No STA entry for own AP 00:11:6b:3d:7f:6a
[ 2889.384000] wlan0: No STA entry for own AP 00:11:6b:3d:7f:6a
[ 2921.384000] wlan0: No STA entry for own AP 00:11:6b:3d:7f:6a
 (and the last line repeated many times)

This is the output of "iwconfig wlan0" when the connection works:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"stupendous"
          Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:11:6B:3D:7F:6A
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s
          Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
          Link Quality=85/100 Signal level=-42 dBm Noise level=-90 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

I have to do the following to get connectivity again:

ifconfig wlan0 down
rmmod iwlwifi_mac80211
rmmod iwl4965
modprobe iwl4965
iwconfig wlan0 essid stupendous
(wait a bit, because it won't get associated)
iwconfig wlan0 ap off
iwconfig wlan0 ap any
(hey, now it does associate!)
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.2.14 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

After this, it immediately works again.

I didn't find another way to get the connection working after it drops (short of rebooting).

[Adrian (ruewan)]

I have a toshiba A205-4777 with the same wireless card. My connection drops at random intervals also.

[john (hellandbarrenjoy)]

i get the same exact error with the intel 3945abg once i upgraded both my laptops to hardy. before that i never saw the error in gutsy. i've seen many posts over a span of a couple of years on this error over several distros/kernels/iwlxxxx so i'm assuming this entails something general with a package or combination of packages. who knows? anyway, i've been able to reconnect fairly easily by executing:

'sudo iwlist scan'
'ping something_on_the_internet.com'

every time i do this, i get a reply and i'm back in business. this is only 2 commands so i thought i'd throw that out there as it seems you're having to do a lot with the whole loading and unloading of the iwl modules. this works for me on both my laptops whenever my wireless drops due to the 'No STA entry for own AP' message. maybe this will work for you. for those that have hardy, i installed linux-backports-modules-2.6.24-16-generic and linux-backports-modules-hardy-generic on one of my laptops to see if the wireless in both laptops stop working or just the one i did not install the 2 packages on. also, another thing i noticed is that master mode refers to the AP and managed mode refers to the station (STA) which i guess would be the laptop. i have this set to 'auto'. if the backport modules do not correct the issue for the wireless my next step is to add:

wireless-mode managed
wireless-ap master

in /etc/network/interfaces

if i still get disconnects then i guess i'll put a script in cron that runs when ever i get a new 'No STA entry for own AP' entry that will scan and ping automatically for me in case i'm away from the laptop and can't do it locally.

[Mike (insomniux)]

Hi,
I have the same problem with a linksys (RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g) card. Jurjen's solution also works for me, but it is quite annoying.
Any options?
Mike

[PaulK (pkeser)]

I was having similar wireless problems with Hardy on my ThinkPad T60. Whenever I would roam within the building, same SSID, different AP I would loose connection. Also sometimes just sitting there I would loose connection. dmesg would show

[235611.732641] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235643.724277] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235675.713931] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235707.705562] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235739.696215] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235771.686542] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235803.677537] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235835.668154] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235867.658798] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235899.648452] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235931.640089] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235963.630732] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[235995.621380] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[236027.611036] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[236059.601680] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[236075.342465] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
[236107.332705] eth0: No STA entry for own AP 00:1b:8f:8a:4c:40
.
.
.

I found this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/149214

solution quoted below:
<quote>

 Anton Khokhlov wrote on 2007-12-20: (permalink)

Yesterday I had found the solution. Ubuntu seems to use old Intel firmware and the issue will be resolved if you perform the following steps:
- Download the last firmware archive from http://www.intellinuxwireless.org/?p=iwlwifi&n=Downloads . The file's name is iwlwifi-4965-ucode-version number.tgz
- Unpack the archive tar xvf iwlwifi-4965-ucode-what version you got.tgz
- Copy iwlwifi-4965.ucode from the unpacked folder into /lib/firmware/your kernel version/iwlwifi-4965.ucode and /lib/firmware/your kernel version/iwlwifi-4965-1.ucode (you should overwrite two files with the same data)

After that you need to reboot or just to say
rmmod iwl4965
modprobe iwl4965
Now on my computer it have been working for the 24 hours continuously without any disconnect. But I can not guarantee it works everywhere.

</quote>

And it seems to have solved it we will see next meeting :-)

Good Luck

-PaulK