On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 09:04:36AM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> Vincent <10.50@free.fr> writes:
> >> I find that changing the card mode (11a, 11b, etc.) a couple of times
> >> with ifconfig seems to get it back.
> >
> > When the link goes down, a simple "ifconfig ath0 down" followed by
> > "ifconfig ath0 up" does not work. The link is restored at the 802.11
> > level, but no ping would work. If, instead of "ifconfig ath0 up", I
> > do: "ifconfig ath0 up nwkey 0xblahblah", it works fine again.
> 
> I find the sequence
> 
> ifconfig ath0 mode auto
> ifconfig ath0 mode 11b
> 
> and similar things will also make it work fine.
> 
> I'm starting to think it may in fact be that settings get corrupted in
> the card and changing card parameters (rather than just bringing it up
> and down) somehow fixes that. I can't be sure though.
> 
> > I *really* suspect WEP to go astray.
> 
> Ed Gould does not seem to be using WEP and he is also seeing the
> problem, so I suspect it is not WEP.
> 
> > There was the same problem long ago ? I mean during spring, when I
> > bought my card. Then the hal code and driver were updated and I
> > noticed considerable improvement (no noticeable disconnections
> > anymore). Something must have changed during this summer, while I was
> > away on holidays. This is some sort of regression.
> 
> Yes. There was a new HAL imported recently. I think that we're all
> seeing the resulting problems.

Why do you think the HAL has anything to do with it?  A *lot* has changed,
both in ath(4) (the non-HAL parts) and in the net80211 driver framework
that ath(4) depends on.

net80211 debug messages may be highly informative.  You can turn
those on with sysctl -w net.link.ieee80211.vap0.debug=XXXXX,
for XXXXX some combination of flags.  The flags are defined in
src/sys/net80211/ieee80211_var.h.  Flags I would enable to start
are IEEE80211_MSG_NODE, IEEE80211_MSG_ASSOC, IEEE80211_MSG_AUTH,
IEEE80211_MSG_SCAN, and IEEE80211_MSG_STATE.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933