wireless networking problem with AR5418

[Deb]

I am using Apple Macbook pro 3.1. loaded Fedora 10 thinking the included ath9k driver would work flawlessly, but that is not the case... to be fair it worked when I installed F10 but somehow lost during the updates. do not know where the problem lies.


$uname -a
Linux xxx 2.6.27.3-44.fc10.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Oct 24 00:02:28 EDT 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux



$lspci|grep Network
0b:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5418 802.11abgn Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)



$dmesg|tail -12
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authentication with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a timed out
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authentication with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a timed out
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a
wlan0: authentication with AP 00:1b:11:62:a9:4a timed out


does anyone else face similar problem? any clues will be welcome.
thanks

[Deb]

answering to my own question.

The issue is due to NetworkManager (looking back, this is not the first time that NetworkManager has proven to be such a pain ). When I dumped NetworkManager and installed wicd the problem disappeared. Wondering why such a nice package as wicd is not there in the fedora repo??!

[partha]

answering to my own question.

The issue is due to NetworkManager (looking back, this is not the first time that NetworkManager has proven to be such a pain ). When I dumped NetworkManager and installed wicd the problem disappeared. Wondering why such a nice package as wicd is not there in the fedora repo??!

I am having similar problems. Do you know what the problem with Network Manager is? I have filed a bugzilla (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465696), but I am not really making a lot of progress.

To the OT, do you have an N-router? I find that I was able to connect without Network Manager (using dhclient). However, pings take a long time and firefox times out. So, technically I have a connection I suppose, but it is next to useless.

Thanks for any insight.

Partha

[younker]

answering to my own question.

The issue is due to NetworkManager (looking back, this is not the first time that NetworkManager has proven to be such a pain ). When I dumped NetworkManager and installed wicd the problem disappeared. Wondering why such a nice package as wicd is not there in the fedora repo??!

I will try this first, now I disabled NM service and use ifup wlan0 to activate my wireless connection.

[Deb]

I will try this first, now I disabled NM service and use ifup wlan0 to activate my wireless connection.

I must say I had limited sucess with wicd's "wext" driver and WPA connections. I do not know yet how to compile wicd with ath9k support, or is it possible at all. the 2.6.27 kernel includes the ath9k driver which works well. only if the default NM was behaving itself.
@younker
What was your impression of directly controlling the card with wpa_supplicant? I am thinking of making a small network script and every time run it to connect to the home network manually. I will not have roaming but at least I will not have erratic connection loss and reconnection problems.

[younker]

I must say I had limited sucess with wicd's "wext" driver and WPA connections. I do not know yet how to compile wicd with ath9k support, or is it possible at all. the 2.6.27 kernel includes the ath9k driver which works well. only if the default NM was behaving itself.
@younker
What was your impression of directly controlling the card with wpa_supplicant? I am thinking of making a small network script and every time run it to connect to the home network manually. I will not have roaming but at least I will not have erratic connection loss and reconnection problems.

I disabled wpa_supplicant, as the encryption makes the network very slow, I added a filter to the router only allow the specific mac address to connect with.

[partha]

I disabled wpa_supplicant, as the encryption makes the network very slow, I added a filter to the router only allow the specific mac address to connect with.

I am sure people have told you that they can steal your first born if you don't have an encrypted network. :)

As long as you live far from your nearest neighbour, you should be OK. Try to also restrict the number of ip address your dhcp server will give out and you might want to prevent SSID broadcast.

I have found the wpa2 does not usually slow down the network.

Partha