ath using hostap sets MTU to 2290 / channel '0' no longer works

[Chris Buechler]

Sam Leffler wrote:
> John T. Yocum wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a system running pfSense, which is built on top of FreeBSD 
>> 7.0-RELEASE-p3. In the system I have an Atheros wireless card, which 
>> when I enable hostap, changes it's MTU to 2290. If an explanation is 
>> listed on a man page, I apologize, I did try searching.
>>
>> Any ideas why this might happen? It doesn't appear to be a pfSense 
>> issue, as it appears their code actually tries to set the MTU to 1500.
>>
>> Only reason I ask here, is I noticed in my searching on Google, I 
>> noticed others that aren't running pfSense have their MTU set to 2290.
> MTU on an 802.11 network is 2290.  If you don't want the default then 
> change it.  If you cannot then please provide the exact steps you take 
> that do not work.

Thanks for the reply, Sam! 

I have an ath card I'm working with that sets its MTU to 1500 in hostap, 
so there seems to be inconsistent behavior here. This card, specifically:
http://www.netgate.com/product_info.php?products_id=130

We added a forced MTU of 1500 to wireless cards in pfSense (as a stop 
gap testing measure since they're frequently bridged to Ethernet and the 
bridge won't work unless the wireless card is 1500), but it still 
appears to revert to 2290 for people.

I haven't had time to fully quantify this, and I can't replicate it with 
the hardware I have at hand as it uses 1500 without specifying any MTU. 
If I can come up with better info and steps to replicate, I'll post back.

While I have your attention, we have found one change in behavior 
between 6.x and 7.0. I'm not sure if it's a regression or intentional, 
any insight would be appreciated. "ifconfig ath0 channel '0'" used to 
work in 6.x with hostap mode. Now users are finding their AP does not 
show up unless they manually specify a channel. Running that command shows:

# ifconfig ath0 channel '0'
ifconfig: unknown/undefined channel number 0 flags 0x0

At boot time when the above is set, I get (dmesg|grep ath0):
Jul 27 18:24:44 pfSense kernel: ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, 
AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
Jul 27 18:24:44 pfSense kernel: ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 
0x88010000-0x8801ffff irq 10 at device 0.0 on cardbus1
Jul 27 18:24:44 pfSense kernel: ath0: [ITHREAD]
Jul 27 18:24:44 pfSense kernel: ath0: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface
Jul 27 18:24:44 pfSense kernel: ath0: Ethernet address: 00:0b:6b:20:3a:4d
Jul 27 18:24:44 pfSense kernel: ath0: mac 5.9 phy 4.3 radio 3.6
Jul 27 18:24:47 pfSense kernel: ath0: ath_chan_set: unable to reset 
channel 6 (2437 Mhz, flags 0x490 hal flags 0x150)
Jul 27 18:24:47 pfSense kernel: ath0: unable to reset hardware; hal status 0

The above was also seen by a pfSense user with a different ath card, 
miniPCI I believe. Numerous people have reported that "auto" channel 
(what our GUI translates to channel 0 in ifconfig) no longer works with 
ath cards on 7.0-based versions when they were working fine previously 
on 6.2 and 6.3-based versions.

The ifconfig man page mentions using channel - or any should do the same 
as 0. Both of those do not produce any error messages (they return no 
output), but the AP still isn't visible. I haven't confirmed this part, 
but I believe running ifconfig ath0 down / ifconfig ath0 up after 
running either channel - or channel 'any' will make it work. Not sure on 
behavior at boot time.

I tested an old wi(4) card with channel '0' and it still works the same 
as in 6.x.

I was waiting to post until I had time to gather more definitive 
information but since someone else brought it up, thought I'd add to it. 
If I can help gather any additional information please let me know.

thanks,
Chris