wifi loses its mind

[Will Senn <will.senn%gmail.com@localhost>]

    I have an athn0 device set
      up on my inspiron n4110 with netbsd10 stable. It's connected to my
      wifi access point. If I'm working on the device console or in a
      terminal, it's able to access the internet and local network, no
      issues. However, if I remote into it over ssh and leave the
      connection open, it will eventually lose it's mind, meaning that
      the ssh session stops responding, I can't ping it from the remote
      host on another terminal, and if I log into the device locally, it
      can't ping my remote host... until I do ifconfig, after that ping
      starts working again.
      
      here's ifconfig:
    athn0:
        flags=0x8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu
        1500
      
             ssid Phoenix nwkey
      65536:"",0x299ab4bb1d4a60ce4a701469277efb16,"",""
      
             powersave off
      
             bssid 54:a0:50:d4:84:c0 chan 11
      
             address: cc:af:78:54:67:d3
      
             media: IEEE802.11 autoselect (OFDM24 mode 11g)
      
             status: active
      
             inet6 fe80::ceaf:78ff:fe54:67d3%athn0/64 flags 0 scopeid
      0x1
      
             inet 192.168.1.14/24 broadcast 192.168.1.255 flags 0
    
    
      Weird and flaky, help w/a path to troubleshooting appreciated :).
      
      Will