misc/69019: wlan (wi) stalling after 2-3 hrs of moderate traffic

[Matthias Buelow]

>Number:         69019
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       wlan (wi) stalling after 2-3 hrs of moderate traffic
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Tue Jul 13 23:00:40 GMT 2004
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Matthias Buelow
>Release:        5.2.1-p9
>Organization:
Univ. Wuerzburg
>Environment:
FreeBSD xxx 5.2.1-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE-p9 #0: Tue Jul 13 18:40:15 CEST 2004     root at xxx:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/xxx  i386

>Description:
      I'm using the following wlan PCI card:

wi0: <Intersil Prism2.5> mem 0xcf9ff000-0xcf9fffff irq 5 at device 17.0 on pci0
wi0: 802.11 address: 00:0d:54:aa:62:12
wi0: using RF:PRISM2.5 MAC:ISL3874A(Mini-PCI)
wi0: Intersil Firmware: Primary (1.1.0), Station (1.4.9)
wi0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

It works fine but only so for 2-3 hours.  At moderate traffic
(80K/s thru a DSL access point, like downloading & building some ports)
after that time, throughput is highly reduced and connections start 
stalling.
Reconfiguring the interface doesn't help.  New connections start at ca. 50%
the bandwidth it would normally use and deteriorate within a minute
to zero throughput (complete stalling).
A reboot of the machine fixes the problem instantly (for another
2-3 hours).
A comparative installation with a different OS showed no such effects.
Another machine running a different OS beside the machine in question
doesn't show the above effects.

>How-To-Repeat:
      I don't know how to reliably reproduce the problem.
It occurs here every time.
>Fix:
      None known.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: