Slow upload on Android devices (edit: all devices)
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I installed four other wifi analyser/sniffer apps. All but one detected the hidden WEP network.
I rebooted my pfSense box, hoping there would be some interface to the AR9280 in the bios where I could disable WEP but nothing.
As I said, there is nothing in pfSense's config.xml.
I wish all the wifi sniffers were wrong, but it would be a convenient explanation to my lost and delayed traffic. As you can see from the graph (and all the other graphs from the other tools) the WEP network signal strength is consistently stronger than my WPA2 network so it makes sense that WEP could be interfering.
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I also have this hangover from when I first started messing around with a Nano build of pfSense. In file /etc/loader.conf.local
autoboot_delay="1"
if_ath_load="YES"
if_ath_pci_load="YES"I suspect none of that is required any more and I doubt it has an effect but you never know.
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Ooo, interesting stuff. Here's my output from athstats:
[2.1-RELEASE][root@pfsense.fire.box]/root(1): athstats athstats: ath0: Invalid argument athstats: ath0: Invalid argument 44570515 data frames received 23809533 data frames transmit 157053 tx frames with an alternate rate 17847009 long on-chip tx retries 3848293 tx failed 'cuz too many retries 40 stuck beacon conditions 54M current transmit rate 105752 tx stopped 'cuz no xmit buffer 7489 tx failed 'cuz dma buffer allocation failed 131452 tx frames with no ack marked 18653355 tx frames with short preamble 2453819 rx failed 'cuz of bad CRC 1 rx failed 'cuz decryption 18237535 rx failed 'cuz frame too short 118055 rx failed 'cuz of PHY err 2752 transmit override receive 11756 OFDM restart 103547 CCK restart 67353936 beacons transmitted 229918 periodic calibrations -0/+0 TDMA slot adjust (usecs, smoothed) 33 rssi of last ack 20 avg recv rssi -96 rx noise floor 5024844 tx frames through raw api 7489 raw tx failed 'cuz interface/hw down 18 rx failed 'cuz frame too large 51625 cabq frames transmitted 21221 cabq xmit overflowed beacon interval 1 switched default/rx antenna Antenna profile: [1] tx 19961028 rx 44570515Also loads of failures but that's over some time (~80 days) and quite a lot of data. I also see errors in Status: Interfaces:
WIFI1 interface (ath0) Status up MAC address 00:11:f5:**:**:** IPv4 address 192.168.10.1 Subnet mask IPv4 255.255.255.0 IPv6 Link Local fe80::211:f5ff:fe**:****%ath0_wlan0 Media autoselect mode 11g <hostap> Channel 8 SSID ******** BSSID b8:3e:**:**:**:** Rate 54M RSSI 15.0 In/out packets 11078538/18599609 (1.24 GB/21.94 GB) In/out packets (pass) 11078538/18599609 (1.24 GB/21.94 GB) In/out packets (block) 41613/1 (7.23 MB/48 bytes) In/out errors 1497/3638 Collisions 0</hostap>Interesting that my 'antenna profile' lists only [1] out of what I assume is 0,1 or 2 even though I have connector 0 selected.
Edit: Also interesting is my ratio of Tx_retries vs total transmit frames. It looks like I have a very large number of retries which is probably because I'm in an area with many many other wifi networks.
Steve
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I'd be interested if a wifi sniffer also indicates a WEP being broadcast from your card.
My antenna profile after rebooting still shows TX on [0] and RX on [1], despite my [1], [1] pfSense GUI wifi interface settings.
I emailed Adrian Chadd to ask his opinion. I'm not sure how interested he will be in an 8.3-based OS but he would probably have some insight that's beyond my random guesses.
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Using Wifi Analyzer in Andorid, which looks like what you're using, I see no hidden WEP networks.
Adrian is a busy man, he's almost single handedly responsible for all the Atheros code you see in FreeBSD, but he does have a presence here on the forum. No idea how often he checks in.
Looks like your last post got eaten by BB code but I assume your TX antenna profile was not 1?
Steve
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Ah yeah, I guess```
[0]Adrian replied in like 2 seconds with lots of helpful suggestions … but then checked and basically said (paraphrasing) it's not worth too much bother on 2.1 since he did heaps of fixes for FreeBSD 9.x. So bring on 2.2 I guess. In order to test my phantom WEP issues, the best bet would be to install FreeBSD on a laptop or whatever with an Atheros card and capture packets, but I don't have access to any suitable hardware. I'll ask at work tomorrow or I have an old Netbook somewhere with battery issues that I might be able to disassemble and hook up to power. -
The first thing I would do is power up the card without an OS and see if perhaps there is something in cards firmware that's defaulting to a WEP host.
Can you see the MAC address of the WEP AP? Is it definitely the same card? Perhaps some other device like a phone running a hotspot server?
Adrian replied in like 2 seconds with lots of helpful suggestions …
Well you've gone straight to the source of knowledge there so anything I say is totally obsolete! ;) A man I already held in high esteem has just risen further. You've got to love open source software when things like that happen. :)
Steve
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How can I power up the card without an OS? It's a half mini-PCIe card on my Jetway motherboard. There's absolutely no interface to it, as far as I'm aware.
Yeah, the MAC address is the same. I had a quick browse through lots of the /var/log logs and nothing to do with WEP at all. In fact, I suspect pfSense has no awareness of it and it's coming direct from hardware.
What I might do, since my curiousity is piqued, is buy another Atheros card since they're cheap enough and stick it in the PC and run FreeBSD Live, since I've already got Windows and Ubuntu and I don't need another full OS install, and then try and see what Adrian can tell me from a packet capture run.
One thing Adrian did recommend was to hook up a second antenna. I will do that for sure.
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How can I power up the card without an OS?
Disconnect the boot media from the board, turn it on.
Check that the wifi card isn't already broadcasting stuff.Steve
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Ah, I get it. Ok did that, nothing. Both ap signals drop to nothing so the card isn't broadcasting independently of pfsense.
I did some debugging stuff yesterday using the wlandebug tool. I obviously left some flags set, because when I switched on the monitor attached to pfsense it was full of "pwr save q overflow, drops n" messages, where n is a number. That's all through my system logs too. The internet points to some threads about that, some involving Adrian. I'll read more when I have time.
My atheros card is physically underneath another Intel triple nic card so I didn't remove that card and have a look at the atheros. I will wait until I get a new antenna in a week or two. It might be tight fitting the antenna leads under the Intel, hippie it works.
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While answering someone else's post in another thread, one thing that jumped out at me regarding my seeing two wifi broadcasts (one anonymous) is my listing of ifconfig contains two interfaces related to my wifi:
ath0
ath0_wlan0The latter is the one that I use as my wifi interface. The former is part of a list of "raw interfaces", consisting of ath0, re0, re1, em0, em1, em2 amongst others. On top of those raw interfaces is where I've built my actual interfaces, e.g. wlan_ath0, em1_vlan2, …, em1_vlan8. So I'm guessing that raw ath0 is the one I'm seeing being broadcast. Where are those configured? Can I disable that one somehow? Will that also kill my ath0_wlan0?
The only ones that show up in my pfSense GUI interfaces are the named ones, corresponding to the wlan_ath0, em1_vlanx, etc. The raw ones are the options that I get to pick from in the Network Port drop-down combos when assigning or creating a new interface.
It doesn't present any issues having this second anonymous wifi broadcast, just annoys the pedant in me.
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That's just how it works I FreeBSD. I have a similar 'parent' inerface shown in ifconfig. The ath driver/hardware can support multiple virtual access points and each is represented by a different interface. In pfSense the interfaces are named athX_wlanX which makes it easier to read IMHO. See:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-wireless.htmlSteve