wpa_supplicant considered helpful (was: wpi0 going offline frequently)

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:16:21 +0200
Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost> wrote:

> On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> > The wpi0 problem is a major annoyance.
> 
> I have noticed that just keeping a wpa_cli instance open all the time
> stops the wpi0 interface from going down so often.  Since I started
> doing so, I don't remember seeing any complaints from a script that
> monitors the status and does "ifconfig wpi0 down up" when necessary.
> 
Let me follow up on that with a new observation.  I recently started
running wpa_supplicant, even though most of the nets I use are either
unprotected or use WEP.  wpa_supplicant doesn't prevent the problem,
but it does make the interface recover automatically, and often do so
very quickly.  Furthermore -- and this is the really strange part --
running wpa_supplicant let me connect to unprotected networks that I
was unsuccessful at connecting to with out.  I saw this quite clearly
at the Minneapolis IETF meeting, where there are *many* access points.
I was virtually unable to connect; wpi0 just wouldn't latch on to a
carrier.  When I ran wpa_supplicant, though, it all just worked.

"Magic is loose in the world".


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb