ath problem

[Andy Bontoft]

Sam Leffler wrote:

> Andy Bontoft wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> I'm unable to get a wireless access point to work properly and for 
>> the life of me I can't work out why. I've spent the past few evenings 
>> trawling the mailing list archives without much success. I'm hoping 
>> someone can point me in the right direction.
>> It's an Atheros 5212 (Wistron cm9 miniPCI) in a soekris 4801 box.
>
>
> 5212 Wistron cm9 means nothing; dmesg|grep ath will get you the 
> mac+phy revs that identify your part.

ath_hal: 0.9.14.9 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413)
ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xa0010000-0xa001ffff irq 11 at device 14.0 on pci0
ath0: Ethernet address: 00:0b:6b:35:cb:82
ath0: mac 5.9 phy 4.3 radio 3.6

>
>> A test client (WinXP SP2) can associate and on occasion obtains an 
>> address from the DHCP server on the ether side of the AP. Most of the 
>> time it is unable to obtain an address however, and even when it does 
>> after a few seconds it changes to the default not connected address 
>> of the 169.254/16 network.
>> Initially I was trying to configure hostap for wpa+802.1x (EAP_TLS), 
>> the 802.1x worked fine and the XP laptop received its address, again 
>> after a few seconds the address would revert to the 169.254/16 
>> network. To try and identify the issue I switched to a simple wep 
>> mode (without hostap), but I have the same issue. The athstats tool 
>> reports a lot of failures.
>> I haven't attached pages and pages of debug output as I'm not sure 
>> what would be required and don't want to flood the list. I have just 
>> attached a few of the basic things, but if more information is 
>> required I can obviously supply it.
>> Thanks for your time
>> andy
>> btw - the same laptop works perfectly with an identical config 
>> (except the SSID is different) on second 'off the shelf' AP.
>>
>> ap# ifconfig ath0
>> ath0: flags=8847<UP,BROADCAST,DEBUG,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
>>        inet6 fe80::20b:6bff:fe35:cb82%ath0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
>>        inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0xff000000 broadcast 0.255.255.255
>>        ether 00:0b:6b:35:cb:82
>>        media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect mode 11g <hostap>
>>        status: associated
>>        ssid Z channel 9 bssid 00:0b:6b:35:cb:82
>>        authmode OPEN privacy ON deftxkey 1 wepkey 1:104-bit txpowmax 53
>>        protmode CTS dtimperiod 1 bintval 100
>
>
> Run open and simplify your config until you figure out what's wrong. 
> Channels 1, 6, and 11 are usually the best for signal w/ 6 preferred. 
> Not sure why your ap is using 9.

I set it to run on channel nine as at any given time I can see between 
seven and fifteen wireless networks, with on average half of them 
running on channel eleven. I run the 'off the shelf' ap I mentioned on 
channel six and as they're about two foot apart I thought picking an 
unused channel might be reasonable - incorrectly it seems.

>
> You don't indicate if the client is using 11g or 11b; based on the 
> statistics I'm guessing 11g.

Yes I was hoping to use the 11g speeds.

>
> You probably need to setup a 3rd machine and sniff the traffic to see 
> what's going on.  Windows has some serious timing requirements in 
> their system and if you enable debugging on the ap you may slow things 
> down enough that the client will time out.
>
I'll try.

>     Sam
>
>>
>> ap# sysctl net.link.ether.bridge
>> net.link.ether.bridge_cfg: "ath0,sis0"
>> net.link.ether.bridge_ipfw: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge_ipf: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.config: "ath0,sis0"
>> net.link.ether.bridge.enable: 1
>> net.link.ether.bridge.predict: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.dropped: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.packets: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.ipfw_collisions: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.ipfw_drop: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.copy: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.ipfw: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.ipf: 0
>> net.link.ether.bridge.debug: 2
>> net.link.ether.bridge.version: 031224
>>
>> ap# ./athstats
>> 1666 tx management frames
>> 5 tx frames discarded prior to association
>> 996 tx failed 'cuz too many retries
>> 11502 long on-chip tx retries
>> 221 tx frames with no ack marked
>> 204 tx frames with short preamble
>> 57002 rx failed 'cuz of bad CRC
>> 136258 rx failed 'cuz of PHY err
>>    122418 OFDM timing
>>    13840 CCK timing
>> 28961 beacons transmitted
>> 165 periodic calibrations
>> 4 rfgain value change
>> 4489 rate control checks
>> 5 rate control dropped xmit rate
>
>
> This is odd; are you using ath_rate_sample?  If there is noise causing 
> the rate control code to drop the tx rate then
>
No, I had ath_rate_onoe compiled into the kernel, it was running with 
default sysctl settings.
I'm in the process of recompiling without it

Thank you for your reply
andy



>> rssi of last ack: 19
>> avg recv rssi: 33
>> 59 switched default/rx antenna
>> Antenna profile:
>> [1] tx      472 rx     3037
>> [2] tx      414 rx       29
>>
>
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-- 
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