I can confirm this problem with a homebrew 2.6.30-rc2 kernel and the ath5k driver. As to whether networkmanager, wpa_supplicant or any other piece of the wireless action is the culprit here I can not give an answer. I do suspect that this has something to do with the ath5k driver (and, obviously, other drivers as well: rtl8187, broadcom, others?) not being able to keep up a connection while networkmanager/wpa_supplicant does a scan for available networks. According to an OLPC bug report (https://dev.laptop.org/ticket/9048) the scans can be disabled using wpa_cli. I have not tried this though.
I can confirm this problem with a homebrew 2.6.30-rc2 kernel and the ath5k driver. As to whether networkmanager, wpa_supplicant or any other piece of the wireless action is the culprit here I can not give an answer. I do suspect that this has something to do with the ath5k driver (and, obviously, other drivers as well: rtl8187, broadcom, others?) not being able to keep up a connection while networkmanager/ wpa_supplicant does a scan for available networks. According to an OLPC bug report (https:/ /dev.laptop. org/ticket/ 9048) the scans can be disabled using wpa_cli. I have not tried this though.