VOTE if you like to see better Wifi driver support in pfSense !!!
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Besides:
@erikarn:FWIW, I've just committed a fix that lets one run the -HEAD ath(4) driver on an 8.x tree.
means that anyone can compile the ath(4) driver from -HEAD on a FreeBSD 8.3 machine and load the resulting kernel module on pfSense 2.1. (I think!)
As soon as 8.3 gets official I'm sure someone will do that.Steve
That would be fantastic. I have an AR5416 based card (RNX-N360PC) that occasionally goes offline. It tries to reset the hardware due to a "stuck beacon" and fails leaving the card unusable until the system is restarted. Based on the research I've done it appears to be a bug with noise floor calculation that may be fixed in -HEAD.
I specifically bought an ath card to have better support on Linux and BSD but this bug still nailed me :(
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I get stuck beacons but it never actually causes a problem.
You can try setting hw.ath.bstuck to a higher value, I use 8.Steve
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My pfsense box here at the office is sitting between other equipment on a rack in a server room; not a good place for a wireless access point. We use 3 APs in different parts of the office to get coverage.
As for my house if I need to move something big I would rather plug in to my gigabit switch then do it over wireless anyway. G is fine for internet stuff as it is still faster then my DSL.
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I get stuck beacons but it never actually causes a problem.
You can try setting hw.ath.bstuck to a higher value, I use 8.Steve
I have it set to 8. I usually have several successful resets after stuck beacons before it gets the card into an inconsistent state. I went through numerous iterations of settings and tweaks but I still end up having to restart 2-3x a week.
My AP is in an environment with very little other activity (no other Wifi, bluetooth, microwave, etc.) which, as I understand it, lends itself to the overshooting problem that causes the stuck beacon resets. You have less likelihood of going from a very low noise floor to a high one and interpolating to an out of range value if you're in an environment with one or more other radios within range. When my neighbor turns on their wifi printer (acts as an AP in ad-hoc mode) it normally causes my wifi to go down. Sometimes Wii controllers (bluetooth) will cause it to go down too.
I've never successfully logged it happening. As soon as it happens hostapd goes into an infinite loop trying to reset the HW and floods the log. By the time I'm able to either kill hostapd or restart it has filled and rolled over my system log. I have noticed (as I mention above) that it can/will successfully reset sometimes though.
If I understood BSD better (I'm of a Linux background) then I might try to fix the code that causes this.