From owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Oct 21 13:35:09 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5AAEC16A418 for ; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:35:09 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from sam@errno.com) Received: from ebb.errno.com (ebb.errno.com [69.12.149.25]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0257A13C4B8 for ; Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:34:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from sam@errno.com) Received: from sam-lefflers-powerbook-g4-15.local ([10.0.0.178]) (authenticated bits=0) by ebb.errno.com (8.13.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id l9L32Zcr016314 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:02:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sam@errno.com) Message-ID: <471AC14A.9060806@errno.com> Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:02:34 -0700 From: Sam Leffler Organization: Errno Consulting User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (Macintosh/20070728) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Kevin Oberman References: <20071021003032.D2DA04500E@ptavv.es.net> In-Reply-To: <20071021003032.D2DA04500E@ptavv.es.net> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.3 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-DCC-dcc-servers-Metrics: om; whitelist Cc: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Problems running ath with bgscan enabled X-BeenThere: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Mobile computing with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:35:09 -0000 Kevin Oberman wrote: > Ever since the update of the HAL and the new 802.11 code a few months > ago (in current), I have been having problems, especially when I was in > locations with multiple APs available. > > The problem was periodic loss of association. If I was at home where I > can usually only see a couple of APs, the problem would occur an > average of about 10 times a day with re-association in about 10 seconds, > sometimes less. This is annoying, but not very disruptive. > > When away from home and in an urban location where there are several > APs, both the frequency of the loss of connectivity and the time to > re-associate increase. Last week at the NANOG meeting there were 4 > conference b/g APs and 4 11a APS seen at all times along with the > hotel's tmobile and a couple of random ones. Only the two conference > SSIDs (nanog-arin and nanog-arin-a) were in my wpa_supplicant.conf > file. > > My bgscan interval was the default 300 and almost every 5 minutes I > would lose connectivity, often for over a minute. When I made the > association between the bgscan interval and the drop-outs, I did an > "ifconfig ath0 -bgscan" and things stabilized immediately. No further > problems. > > ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413) > ath0: mem 0xb4000000-0xb400ffff irq 11 at device 2.0 on pci11 > ath0: mac 5.9 phy 4.3 radio 3.6 > > This is really not acceptable for default behavior as it won't be clear > to many how to fix it. Is it expected or is something wrong? > > Thanks! There hasn't been a hal change in a long time. bgscan works by telling the ap your station is in power save mode, leaving the channel briefly, and then returning. I have not seen any issues with it w/ or w/o wpa_supplicant. Maybe you can provide some information to help diagnose this? I see nothing helpful like a log from wpa_supplicant or statistics. Sam