WLAN Atheros connection problems

zash1958

I am using

2.2-ALPHA (amd64)
built on Sun Jul 27 03:09:58 CDT 2014
FreeBSD 10.0-STABLE

on a Alix APU with a Compex WLE200NX IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini-PCIe card. Thiss is AFAIK an atheros board.

Configured as 802.11na and running in the 5Ghz range only.

Sometimes I get a

############ Jul 28 16:08:03 pfsense kernel: ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)

But the card runs. Most time runs!

If a new client connects via Wlan ist lasts for some minutes for the new connect to run properly. But You can shorten the time for IP traffic if You go in the "android terminal" and send a ping to the Wlan interface of the box.
After this the connections is OK and You can access local hosts and internet hosts.

Does the actual relase need a "wakeup" from a ping or are there any more problems wit WiFi ATM ?

neptunus

Same problem here.

zash1958

I tried all possible settings and combinations. But NO WAY

And transmission power of the card is also not OK.

For a test i started the ALIX APU with ipfire newest release. The WiFi card works flawlessly, without any problems and with a much greater transmission power as in pfsense.

ATM the combination of this card on an actual pfsense is really unusable.

And a fallback to release 2.1x is also a problem because there is no way to use this card in older BSD systems also.

Must be a BIG !!!!! problem with the codebase of the actual BSD 10?

I do not know if this would be fixable in nearest time!

neptunus

@zash1958:

I tried all possible settings and combinations. But NO WAY

And transmission power of the card is also not OK.

For a test i started the ALIX APU with ipfire newest release. The WiFi card works flawlessly, without any problems and with a much greater transmission power as in pfsense.

ATM the combination of this card on an actual pfsense is really unusable.

And a fallback to release 2.1x is also a problem because there is no way to use this card in older BSD systems also.

Must be a BIG !!!!! problem with the codebase of the actual BSD 10?

I do not know if this would be fixable in nearest time!

Mmmm that's too bad. how can we test this better?

zash1958

This is an alpha release. Would it help to file a bug?

I am really not sure about what to do. This is a really big problem for using pfsense as an Wlan AP. I think the developers will work on it.
pFsense has the ability to act as an Wlan AP and so I think it would be fixed. Or is this a problem solely for the Compex/Atheros card an all others will run properly? Any hints or suggestions about this?

zash1958

After some intensive tests I do not think it is a hardware problem.

All connects to the pfsense box run properly after some minutes. First browsers and other programs cannot connect to any sites AND ALSO not to the pfsense box itself.
This means that You cannot open the website of the pfsense box from wireless clients.

BUT

IP adresses from the dhcp server are delivered corechtly to the wifi clients
if You start an ICMP ping, regardless from the pfsense to the clients or from the wifi clients to ANY other adress in intranet or internet starts the fully functional IP connect

I think there is a problem initializing the IP stack of the hostap? IP connects run after some minutes of waiting only

ICMP connects are running from the first second

davros123

Had a similar issue with the beacon…just stopped working after a few hours and no reboot, tweak or change would bring it back to working.

I get the feeling most just give up on wireless and fall back to an AP.

I am sorry to say that is what i did...seems there is no love for wireless and pfsense.

zash1958

This would be a big fail.

In 2.14. it works flawlessly for months!

So I think this must be a problem in bridging and/or the IP stack ?

neptunus

@zash1958:

This would be a big fail.

In 2.14. it works flawlessly for months!

So I think this must be a problem in bridging and/or the IP stack ?

In 2.14. it NEVER worked flawlessly for me. Mmmm this is a shame, I think it is more of a wifi support issue in BSD then in pfsense.

mglaum

You guys are aware that there is a long story behind this? E.g. http://madwifi-project.org/wiki/StuckBeacon ?

I'm running 2.1.3 and I get these same stuck beacons. I don't think this is a problem confined to 2.2.

So how does zash1958 know that his EIRP is greatly reduced? Via the RSSI on a receiving node?

jimp

Typically that's because of a busy channel and the card and driver get confused.

Try adding system tunables for

hw.ath.bstuck = 8
hw.ath.longcal = 30

If that doesn't help, bump bstuck up to 12 or 16.

mglaum

Ya, maybe I should test that. Where do I find out more about those tunables?

zash1958

It seems that this is NOT the problem.

The card itself works. The problem is that the first minutes after connecting a client to the WLAN the IP packets do NOT run…... Only if You start a ping or an nslookup the connection starts immediately.

Thus may be a BIG problem with the bridging or the networking stack itself. ICMP works form first second. IP not.

mglaum

Since I added these tunables, I've not been getting stuck beacon log messages. I never really had observable problems with my wifi anyway.

hw.ath.bstuck = 8
hw.ath.longcal = 30

zash1958

This tunables may cover the "beaconing" problem.

But the "5-minutes-no-ip-on-wlan-connect" problem is not solved with this

shaqan

Try i386 build instead of AMD64. Had the issue, it went away after I switched arch. Tunables on AMD64 only gave some extra time before "beacon stuck" spam stroke again.