wlan card goes to sleep / looses contact with access point
 

(I posted this thread in the wrong forum the first time, it was moved here but got a bit down in the list so I try again, hope it's ok)
--

Hi,

I've such big problems with my wlan connection to Internet via my accesspoint. My computer looses contact with the ap very easily and I'll have to restart the network (service network restart), sometimes the connection lasts as short as a minute, other times it could last several hours, but I can never trust it. And typically I have to restart the network several times every time I use the computer. About 10 minutes is the most common for a connection to last. When I run Windows XP there's never a problem.

I use a Netgear WG311 with Atheros chipset, 3Com Office Connect wireless gateway/router (both 54Mb/s), MadWifi drivers (iwconfig v26) and Mandrake 10.0 Discovery.

An exemple of output from iwconfig when it's working:

ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"Forselius" Nickname:"localhost"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.422GHz Access Point: 00:0D:54:9B:A1:89
Bit Rate:36Mb/s Tx-Power:off Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:19/94 Signal level:-76 dBm Noise level:-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

when it doesn't work

ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"Forselius" Nickname:"localhost"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Bit Rate:1Mb/s Tx-Power:off Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0/94 Signal level:-95 dBm Noise level:-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

My /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifconfig-ath0 file looks like this:

DEVICE=ath0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=no
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=""
NEEDHOSTNAME=yes
ESSID="Forselius"

In /etc/rc.d/init.d/network I have inserted the rows:
### END INIT INFO"
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.3-7mdk/kernel/drivers/net/madwifi_hal.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.3-7mdk/kernel/drivers/net/madwifi_wlan.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.3-7mdk/kernel/drivers/net/madwifi_pci.ko

Can anyone give me a clue on how this problem can be solved?

Kindly,

Mattias Olsson
Sweden

I'm having the exact same problem and I was wondering if parent ever found out how to fix it?

I'm not even 20 feet from the router, and usual time for it to stay up before croaking is about 3 minutes.

Hi,

I never really solved it, instead I changed distribution from Mandrake 10.0 to Suse 9.1. During installation, I found the settings page for network cards and typed in my ESSID, that's all. The wireless network has been working perfectly ever since.

Hope you find a way to solve it!

/Mattias