Comment 1 for bug 289356

I have the same wireless chip set, also in a mac book pro.

The wireless connects for a while, then will kick me off. It won't reconnect and it stops other applications from launching properly, and stops me from authenticating when using sudo.

When it kicks me off, if I try to launch a new application, the window opens, but it has no content. I can't take a screenshot of it.

I also couldn't authenticate using sudo when I try to 'sudo rmmod ath9k'.

Shutting down does not happen properly either. Although the laptop shuts down, when I restart, I have to fsck the disks as they aren't unmounted properly.

Restarting doesn't help, a full shutdown (and remove the battery) seems to be the only way to get the wireless working again for me.

As it stands, I have to use a wired connection as I do not want to risk damaging the file system and having to re-install again.

My kern.log gets the following line repeated many times when this problem occurs.
Oct 26 14:18:05 Zodac kernel: [ 6493.762514] DMA: Out of SW-IOMMU space for 4224 bytes at device 0000:0b:00.0

lspci -v (pretty much the same as Jacob's)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
 Subsystem: Apple Computer Inc. Device 0087
 Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 16
 Memory at d7300000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
 Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
 Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
 Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
 Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable- Mask- TabSize=1
 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting <?>
 Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel <?>
 Kernel modules: ath9k

If there is any more information I can give you, please ask.