Re: ath0: device timeout

[Paul Ripke <stix%stix.id.au@localhost>]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:25:36AM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:01:15 +1100
> Paul Ripke <stix%stix.id.au@localhost> wrote:
> 
> > I'm after ideas... I have an otherwise mostly stable netbsd-4 box
> > with an ath0 card running hostap for my home network. I recently got
> > a Android G1 phone, and since getting it, my MacBook Pro laptop
> > (OS X) frequently times out wireless connections (eg. ssh). It might
> > be 2 minutes, it might be an hour.  Meanwhile, an ssh session from
> > the G1, attached to the same screen session is fine. If I turn the
> > wireless off on the G1, the laptop stays connected fine.
> > 
> > Whenever the laptop times out, I get "ath0: device timeout" to syslog,
> > although connections from the G1 are fine. It's usually a while before
> > even pings from the laptop come through. I've captured some of the
> > timeouts with debug enabled on the interface - log is available to
> > anyone that wants to take a look.
> > 
> I've found that putting
> 
>       hw.ath0.txintrperiod=1
> 
> into /etc/sysctl.conf helps, though it doesn't solve the problem.  (I
> don't remember who suggested that to me.)

I actually had that, too, for ~1yr. Removed it to see if behaviour
changed - it didn't seem to.

> For reasons I don't understand, I also get much better behavior out of
> wireless if I'm running wpa_supplicant, even for WEP.

Interesting! I'll have to give that a try. I'm just waiting for a
couple of bugs to be squashed, and I'll move this box to 5beta and
see what breaks.

Thanks!
-- 
Paul Ripke
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