Pan 0.132 causes wlan failure of WRT54G router

the_penguinator · 05-11-2009, 12:56 PM

This has me baffled. Intermittently when opening Pan0.132 on a Mandriva 2008.1 laptop, the broadcasting of the WRT54G fails and both the Mdv laptop and my wife's Mac lose their wireless connection. I have to reset the ESSID and the wpa passphrase on the router whereupon the laptops in the house are able to re-acquire an authenticated connection with the router.

A wireshark session observing a failure shows the Pan connection attempts to supernews being re-directed to giganews, then several failed authetication errors. I can try to provide more specific details if of the logs if helpful/needed.

Anyone seen behaviour like this before?

Suncoast · 05-12-2009, 04:41 PM

Seems to me you are describing two different issues

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_penguinator

This has me baffled. Intermittently when opening Pan0.132 on a Mandriva 2008.1 laptop, the broadcasting of the WRT54G fails and both the Mdv laptop and my wife's Mac lose their wireless connection. I have to reset the ESSID and the wpa passphrase on the router whereupon the laptops in the house are able to re-acquire an authenticated connection with the router.

Have you set any fancy settings on your Linksys? I had a similar problem (heavy use kills connections) when I tried to use the TCP port priority feature. I turned it off, and updated the Linksys firmware for good measure. No problems since.

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_penguinator

A wireshark session observing a failure shows the Pan connection attempts to supernews being re-directed to giganews, then several failed authetication errors. I can try to provide more specific details if of the logs if helpful/needed.

Anyone seen behaviour like this before?

This would be very very odd. I've only tinkered with pan a little, but it seems similar to agent. Giganews and Supernews does NNTP for ISP's under the ISP's name. Are you sure Pan is not setup to use SN as your primary NNTP, and your ISP is setup as your secondary?

the_penguinator · 05-13-2009, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suncoast

Seems to me you are describing two different issues

Have you set any fancy settings on your Linksys? I had a similar problem (heavy use kills connections) when I tried to use the TCP port priority feature. I turned it off, and updated the Linksys firmware for good measure. No problems since.

This would be very very odd. I've only tinkered with pan a little, but it seems similar to agent. Giganews and Supernews does NNTP for ISP's under the ISP's name. Are you sure Pan is not setup to use SN as your primary NNTP, and your ISP is setup as your secondary?

Nothing fancy in the way of settings, just plain NAT. I think I may go with DD-WRT on this one. I haven't even looked at updating the firmware. The Linksys is v.3 IIRC.

As to the second part, Supernews is the only NNTP service id'd in Pan's prefs. My ISP dropped its news service a couple of years ago.

Suncoast · 05-14-2009, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_penguinator

I haven't even looked at updating the firmware. The Linksys is v.3 IIRC.

I don't have it here to look at, but I am 99% sure that's the same hardware version I had problems with. Linksys has made finding and installing firmware very easy. And you get a few minor new features.

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_penguinator

As to the second part, Supernews is the only NNTP service id'd in Pan's prefs. My ISP dropped its news service a couple of years ago.

Well, Supernews and Giga are two completely separate companies. But just because your ISP dropped NNTP, were you using it? If so, maybe you still have something pointed to it? Like the hosts file?

And if I may insert a personal opinion,

I was a bulk customer of Supernews, and my customers and I were less than thrilled. We switched to UseNetServer.com. It's been a few years, maybe SN has improved.