Problems with Atheros card and hostpd

[Derek Kulinski]

Hello Sam,

Sunday, December 27, 2009, 4:55:12 PM, you wrote:

>> I think I was the only one in thread who used FreeBSD as an AP, also
>> that was before 7.x when I made the log. So I'm not saying it's
>> FreeBSD specific problem, I don't even think it's a BSD problem, but
>> perhaps some kind of incompatibility and I was hoping for some
>> workaround.
> AP mode power save was broken for a time in 7.x (IIRC the aging of 
> frames on the PS q was incorrectly calculated causing them to be tossed
> prematurely)--but that was unrelated to WME/WMM.

Well, it's possible that when I disabled WME/WMM on android it stopped
using power save at all... The behavior was similar to the one you
described. It was throwing out packets claiming those were too old,
but it worked fine with Linux. I think I already provided the link,
but in case I didn't, this is the log that I captured when I was
looking for the issue (it's power save debug messages that you
mentioned):

https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/87903#87903

Does it look ok? How long the packets supposed to be hold before being
discarded?

I think I should still have logs collected using kismet...

> Can't even guess w/o a packet trace and/or debug log.  WME should be
> immaterial to FreeBSD unless crypto was involved in which case you 
> might've hit a bug w/ h/w crypto+WME that's long since been fixed 
> (certain ath parts require the MIC be handled in s/w when WME is used).
>   The best thing to do wrt FreeBSD is run 8.0 or later for much better
> wireless support.

Well right now, I can't reproduce the issue anymore. I just tried it;
I removed the access point completely, restarted the phone, and
hostapd but it still works.

Anyway, between my initial post and now I actually upgraded to 8.0 so
that could be it, though it puzzles me that linux with power saving
enabled worked fine with 7.x (I think it was 7.1)

Actually, the reason why I even mentioned the WME is that I observed
it working at the time I disabled it on the phone, also what made me
experiment with it was post of another person who claimed it fixed his
issue which seemed identical to mine (he used a hardware AP though).
It's also possible that disables WME on android completely disables
power savings.

It's possible it could be just a coincidence. I updated to 8.0 around
the same time (well actually I tried the WME actually before the
upgrade), but it's possible that after I switched it back it continued
to work because 8.0 doesn't have the issue anymore?

One question, any idea if FreeBSD code could be in HP AP 420 and some
other APs? This is the post of the guy that actually made me
experiment with WME:
https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/88983#88983

-- 
Best regards,
 Derek                            mailto:takeda at takeda.tk

Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Computers are from hell.