On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 08:05:04PM -0400, Alicia da Conceicao wrote:
> > By the way, I read some questions about "no buffer space" messages. I've
> > already observed this problem when the traffic rate grows up over
> > 11Mbps...
> 
> Dear Konstantin:
> 
> With my mini-pci type 3b (IIIb) Atheros 5212 Wi/Fi card, those "no
> buffer space"  messages appear to be caused by the NetBSD ath driver
> periodically "losing" the Wi/Fi network signal every few minutes,
> even with low bandwidth activity like SSH keystokes, dispite the fact
> that the driver is set to infrastructure mode, and the card is only
> 2-5 metres from the Wi/Fi router which is in the same room, and the
> signal from the Wi/Fi router is fine since my Wi/Fi enabled PDA
> never loses its Wi/Fi network connection with the same router.
> 
> What is most annoying is that when I boot my laptop into WinXP, the
> same Atheros card, same laptop, and same Wi/Fi antennas are able to
> maintain a constant Wi/Fi network connection indefinitely without
> ever dropping.  So there is no problem in the hardware, and the
> problem solely lies with the ath driver in NetBSD.
> 
> When I grabbed the kernel sources from yesterday, this bug with the
> NetBSD ath driver still persists.  :-(

Alicia,

Nobody doubts that your Atheros card works in WinXP.  I will look into
the NetBSD bug just as soon as I can.

Today I am making a patch that will not fix your problem, but it will
help you produce debug messages for me.

If it is any reassurance, my project is buying 50 Atheros cards, so I
will urgently need for ath(4) to work, myself.  Incidentally, I intend to
use the cards in ad hoc mode, so I will be in the same boat as Konstantin.

Dave

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