Re: Recent fragility with if_wi, 802.11 adhoc/wep, and Tiger

Sam Leffler wrote:
> Michal Mertl wrote:
> > I can confirm that the atheros based client really connects much worse
> > than an IPW based one. When I restart the atheros AP, the ipw card
> > connects immediately after the AP is back but the atheros client either
> > never connects or it will take long time (I didn't wait long enough). It
> > connects immediately after I issue ifconfig down/up on it.
> 
> Once a station has failed to associate with an ap it marks it "bad" and 
> won't try again for a while.  I need to bring in some improvements from 
> another tree that improve this area of the code; we wait too long to 
> re-enable going back to an ap.  Marking the interface down-then-up 
> clears this state so you can immediately re-associate.  The ipw firmware 
> does not use this code so it behaves differently.

I see. This should't in reality be much of a problem anyway.

> > 
> > More interesting finding that I have is about the bridging issue. I
> > wasn't able to find which debug setting (via dev.ath.0.debug or
> > net.wlan.0.debug) will show me any usefull information. Anyways it now
> > seems to me that I was wrong saying that it works at all. The AP bridges
> > the packets only when there is another IP communication between the AP
> > host and one of the clients. It seems to me that the bridged packets are
> > queued somewhere and sent only when there are some non bridged.
> 
> I don't recall what "the bridging issue" was but use 80211debug and 
> athdebug to manipulate these sysctls using mnemonics--80211debug -? will 
> list the controls.  Code is in tools/tools/ath.  At some point these 
> tools probably should be integrated with another program and not stay 
> hidden in the tools directory

I see, thank you. I hope I'll be able to submit better problem reports
then.

> .
> > Test conditions - I have 192.168.1.1 on the AP, .2 on the IPW notebook
> > and .3 on the atheros client. The settings of ath0 on AP are: "mode 11b
> > mediaopt hostap channel 1 ssid test_ap_xx". The settings on clients are
> > almost the same except there I don't issue any mediaopt. I hope I'm not
> > doing anything extra stupid :-). The nodes are just several centimeters
> > apart from each other and I only have tiny antennas. When the only IP
> > communication is the ping from 192.168.1.2 to .3 (between the clients) I
> > don't get any answer. When I ping at the same time from between any of
> > the clients and the AP it works. When I let the first ping run for
> > several seconds and then start the second one I get all the answers at
> > the same time.
> 
> I'm guessing this was the problem where frames bridged internal to the 
> net80211 layer were not dispatched immediately.  If so we both know this 
> was fixed.

Yes, it was.

Thank you

Michal