Experiences with ath(4)

[Sam Leffler]

> I just bought a Netgear WAG511 card and a Netgear WG602 Accesspoint. I
> run the card in 11g mode under current, and I'm having some problems:
>
> *) Powersavemode seems to be not supported at all (and thus it eats the
> battery like a "make world"):
>
># ifconfig ath0 powersave on
> ifconfig: SIOCS80211: Invalid argument
>
>

man ath(4)

> *) Shared Key Authentication seems to be not supported either:
>
># ifconfig ath0 authmode shared
> ifconfig: SIOCS80211: Invalid argument
>
>

Never has been supported under FreeBSD for any 802.11 card (at least not 
that I'm aware of).

> *) If I turn on the debug.ieee80211 sysctl, I see the following messages
> in 30sec- to 2min-intervals:
>
> ieee80211_new_state: RUN -> AUTH
> ieee80211_new_state: AUTH -> AUTH
> ieee80211_new_state: AUTH -> ASSOC
> ieee80211_new_state: ASSOC -> RUN
>
>    (I'm not sure if this is normal behaviour.)
>

Not sure about the interval but it is normal for an AP to periodically 
require stations to reauthenticate/associate.

>
> *) I'm seeing a lot of input errors on the interface:
>
># netstat -i -I ath0
> Name    Mtu Network       Address              Ipkts Ierrs    Opkts Oerrs
> Coll
> ath0   1500 <Link#3>      00:09:5b:41:8d:ac     2054 67646     2058    42
> 0
>
>
> *) Finally, there seems to be a problem with interaction between the AP
> and my ADSL router (I'm not sure if this is a FreeBSD problem, I need to
> test with WinXP too). My LAN looks something like this:
>
>    WLAN Client )))  ((( AP --- Switch --- ADSL router
>                                  |
>                                  |
>                          other hosts in LAN
>
> The ADSL router (a Speedtouch 510) does NAT. Everything seems to work
> fine, but after some time, all connections from the WLAN client to the
> outside world have died. I can connect to the other hosts in the LAN just
> fine, though, and there are no further messages in the log files.
> The quickest way to make it work again, is pulling the card out and plug
> it back it. Any ideas?

If I understand correctly, it doesn't sound like something to do with the 
driver which is all I can control.  I'd suggest sniffing the 802.11 frames 
to see if you can identify anything.  If you have another system+card you 
can do this with something like:

	tcpdump -i ath0 -y IEEE802_11

or use your favorite tool.

	Sam